Scrappy Persistance

It's been more than 5 months now since my dominant arm started hurting for no apparent reason.  One doctor thinks it's myofascial pain.  Another doctor thinks I have a pinched nerve in my elbow and has referred me to a neurologist.  It will be interesting to hear what the neurologist thinks.

Meanwhile, I'm plugging away at things as best as I can.  Some days I function almost normally.  Some days are so bad that I can't click the mouse button or push a cross stitch needle through a hole in 11-count Aida cloth.  Most days are somewhere in between.

I finished handquilting The Crooked Man's Christmas Quilt with embroidery floss and a big stitch, and I mean a big stitch!  Under normal circumstances, a quarter-inch stitch is easy and relaxing, but with my bum arm I had to lower my standards and call half-inch stitches good.  Needless to say, this quilt has a very primitive art look about it.

I'm wary of cutting into any of my larger pieces of fabric, so I've been working with scraps.  If I slip with the rotary cutter and ruin a scrap, it's no big deal.  I've also been puttering around my sewing shed and finding orphan blocks and samples of various piecing techniques and  mixing these finds with scraps to create small projects.  I'm getting pretty good at putting zippers in cosmetic bags!

A few scraps leftover from the Pixie Garden quilt became a cute little bag.  My niece loves TinkerBell, so I have one Christmas gift done.

Here are two more small bags of no particular size.  I cut the fabric then look for a zipper to fit!

This odd-size bag was made from a sample of bargello piecing that was going to be a doll quilt until I cut it in half to make bags.

  

A few more scraps became a storage case for my collection of crochet hooks.  The carrying strap was a hanging loop from a pair of pajama bottoms (who hangs pajamas?) and the cricket button came from my collection of whatever-am-I-going-to-do-with-these buttons.  It's perfect for camouflaging the stitching for the hook-and-loop tape.