QUILTING A PANEL...

The quilt for my Aunt is the first time I have ever attempted to use a panel in a quilt.  I considered an all over meander quilting, but I really wanted to highlight the shoes.  Sooooo....maybe biting off a bit more than this beginner in FMQ could chew...I started outlining the items in the panel.  Surprisingly, after practicing a bit on a scrap sandwich, I was doing pretty well.  Surprising myself, if truth be told.
So I began working on the "real thing".  For a while it was okay, but then my tremor started.  And in addition to my tremor, I started SHAKING!  The result...not so pretty.

The black lines on the beige of the shoe look horrible...but my shaking has not stopped and I don't DARE pick up a seam ripper!  I had discovered that the slower I stitched, the more eyelashes I had on the back.  Setting my speed control in the middle and then putting the pedal to the metal seemed to eliminate all lashes.  Unfortunately, when I started shaking and lost control...the line was there before I could adjust! 

Additionally, I had been practicing with quilting over a pattern drawn on Golden Threads Quilting Tissue and had forgotten to enlarge my stitch length when I began on the quilt.  So the stitches are 1.5 and TINY.  Now is definitely not the time to try to pick out such teeny tiny stitches. 

I showed the quilt to my mom and dad yesterday and they both feel I should leave it.  My Dear Aunt knows my difficulties and she would not expect "perfect"...and the "mistake" will just remind her that I struggled to make her quilt...an expression of my love...even when my body didn't want to cooperate.  I'm taking their suggestion under advisement, lol.  As they said, it is the love behind the quilt that matters. 

This week has Just. Not. Been. Good!  In addition to my normal intention tremor, I'm SHAKY and SWEATY and I feel like a cat on a hot tin roof!  I'm antsy and everything is aggravating me.  Yesterday when the lab faxed over copies of my most recent bloodwork, I found out why!  I am HYPERTHYROID!  Since having my thyroid removed, I have to take a significant amount of levothyroxine (Synthroid) every day.  Sometimes it is a balancing act to keep me in the normal range and not on too little or too much medication.  It has been several years since my TSH has been this low (indicating HYPERthyroid).  The last time I ended up in the hospital with arrhythmia caused by the hyperthyroid.  Guess I had forgotten what the symptoms felt like and it never dawned on me that the feelings of agitation, sweating and shakiness were telling me my body was running too fast! 

This morning the doctor's office called me and told me how to adjust my medication.  Hopefully my body will slow down quickly and I can once again work on her quilt.  Sometimes I get frustrated that I can't sew every day because of my health, but I try to remind myself that I still CAN sew and that is all that matters! 

So, silver lining firmly in place again, I'm heading off to read a book.  Not much danger in that...well except for paper cuts, lol.