Spring is Near!

Hello there folks! Happy Happy Spring!

Well, at least it feels like spring here in Leavenworth, KS. My hands are tingling to go out and plant...but I am trying to hold off. It just feels too soon. I don't think I am going to do veg this year. Just flowers, but I will probably be tempted to plant some tomatoes despite the horrific Tomato Horn Worms we had last year. 

Spring fever aside I have been doing lots of quilt making and quilting. 

Here are 3 of the items I made for Carrie Bloodstone to take to quilt market. Her new collection "Story" is fabulous!

This is the back of the quilt I named "Night Flight". It was super fun to design, make and quilt. I used some of my new Quilters Dream Cotton in Supreme loft. It is so nice. Really dense and works magic with quilting.

I have also bee doing customer quilting. This is the sweetest Christmas quilt. Taylor had exactly the idea she wanted. She wanted straight lines and Curly (almost Dr Seuss) pine trees quilted in the printed parts.

This quilt was so fun to quilt. I thought about using my record function on my Statler and making all the trees the same, but they were so fun to quilt I did them all free hand. That way each on is just a bit different.

This is such a great quilt! Kelly made this one. She gave me free reign with it. I have been wanting to try "Ghost Shapes" for ages and finally had the perfect quilt. I used Quilters Dream Wood batting for this one. Kelly wanted more puffiness with this quilt. Wool is the perfect batting for a bit of puffiness.

I added just a touch of swirls to the outer border in among the quilted stars.

I have to say how fantastic a piecer Kelly is. The centers of the stars were so nice and flat. That sure makes it easy to quilt folks.

Kelly's quilt backs are always as fabulous as the fronts. It is cool how the quilting shows up on the back.


OK, back to work!

xo,
Tia

Holly's Quilt

Hey there! This is my new friend Holly. She had me quilt her lovely spiderweb quilt. If you can possibly believe it this was her very first quilt ever. When she dropped it off I thought she was joking. She had seen some pictures of instagram and wanted it custom quilted similar to several that Angela Walters did. I couldn't do the same thing for a couple reasons...I am no Angela is the #1 reason. So I did a Tia on it...which in mind was pretty good.

Holly wanted it to be quite fluffy, so I used wool batting. I love the loft of wool batting.

I really wanted to quilt a spiderweb or two on here...but she was adamant NO Spiderwebs. Bummer.

I love how she crazy pieced the kites between the octagons.

Here is most of the quilt. I think she did such a great job and I love the sweet color palette. This quilt is for her little girl.

Holly used the pattern by Sarah Fielke in the book Material Obsession 2.

I just finished 3 lovely pieces for quilt market. They look great if I do say so myself. I am now deep into writing patterns for them in case they get picked up by a magazine while at market.

Have the best day ever!

Tia Curtis

Home Health

Hey there folks.

I know it has been a while since I blogged but I truly have been very busy. When I am busy the blog is always the first thing to be put on the back burner. So, if you have been following along with me on  Instagram or Facebook you know that my daughter has had some health issues lately. My daughter has been hearing impaired since birth and the many ear procedures have caused issues with the inner ears. She is in the care of a great team in Kansas City now. Without getting too much into all the details I wanted to talk about Home Health.

My daughter needed IV antibiotics for a 4 week period. Missing that much school for a hospitalization made us all a bit nervous. A friend of mine was a Home Health Nurse and suggested we ask about going that route. All I knew about home health was from my time in Nursing School. It involved me cleaning out the 8 cat litter boxes of a hoarder. It was gross and she had more issues than my little visits could solve. After that I really never gave Home Health another thought.

Lynnea assured me that Home Health has come a long way. Indeed it has! In my mind I was prepared to program pumps and hang IV bags...but I was in for a delightful surprise when the Big Box was delivered to our door. It contained everything we needed already premixed and ready to go for one week of treatments. We just had to find a spot in the fridge for the little balloons of antibiotics. From then on the medicine was delivered to our door via UPS.

The first dose of medicine was given in the hospital after Her PICC line was installed in her arm. The Home Health Nurse arrived later to our house and showed us how to set it all up and what to do. It is an entirely needless system and is just amazing to me. No pumps at all required. The little balloon/grenade is pressurized and after cleaning the port of her PICC line, flushing the line with a syringe of Normal Saline, we twist the Medication tubing into the PICC let the medicine flow until empty (about 30 min) flush again with another syringe of Normal Saline and finally the last syringe of Heparin. It is essential to keep the PICC clean so it is cleaned with the alcohol wipes before each treatment and injection. The Nurse has come to the house to draw blood for the lab tests and do dressing changes. but other that that is has been just my husband and I doing everything. It is such a simple treatment and has had such a mild effect to my daughters day to day activities. I now look at Home Health with new eyes.

Emma is doing super! She is such a trooper. Thank you all for all the kind words and support both here in town and via social media.

xo,
Tia