Arthritis is a real pain in the neck

I spent last week cutting fabric, cutting more fabric, and cutting even more fabric!!  Last Tuesday was a snow day – we got 10 inches.  I didn’t want to drive an hour each way in the snow, so I stayed home from work.  I was able to get the rest of the Sinta’s Choice fabrics cut out for the Ohio Star blocks.  I haven’t cut the sashing or border fabrics yet.  I’ll wait until I finish the blocks just in case I make any mistakes J.

Last Friday, I was off from work and I got up a few hours before Mr. Urban, so I cut all the fabrics for the sashing blocks for the Blogger Girls Block of the Month.  Saturday, I was up early again and started cutting the sashing fabrics for “Meadow Lark” (my April charm quilt).  Yes, poor Cindy Lou is going to have to wait one more month to get done.  Meadow Lark is based on the pattern “Lateness is Rudeness” from the book Back to Charm School by Country Threads.  I’m using two charm packs of Meadow by Blackbird Designs for Moda, so my version will be larger than the Country Threads quilt.  I am using the same two fabrics for the sashing squares as for the sassing strips, so that is also different than the pattern.   In the afternoon, I got some house cleaning done and the dust bunnies were sent packing.  Even though I was tired and sore, I managed to squeeze in a little sewing time and strip pieced the sashing strips and squares.

Sunday morning I put in another hour cutting the sashing strips – all 288 of them.  Then I started piecing the hourglass blocks for my Ohio Star quilt.  I sewed the 5 ½” squares and cut them into 144 quarter square triangle units

 that then became 72 hourglass units. 

 I couldn’t finish up trimming the blocks down to 4 ½” because my neck and shoulders gave out from all the cutting so I had to call it a day.

It’s been a little over a year since I had surgery to remove the discs and fuse 4 of the vertebrae in my neck.  I saw Dr. H, the surgeon, last week and told him my left arm/hand pain and numbness are all gone (thankfully), but I still have neck and shoulder pain.  I let him know that I used to be able to sew for hours at a stretch but now I can barely manage 1 – 1 ½ hours.  He told me that the pain may be from lingering nerve damage (could be permanent) or that the discs above or below the fusion may be starting to go bad.  Geez.  Both sound terrible to me.  Dr. H told me to only sew for 45 minutes at a time then get up and walk around or do something else.  Really?  So it’s off to physical therapy twice a week for the next 6 weeks to see if that will help the pain.  I think I need occupational therapy so I can learn to do the things I like to do (like sewing) without being in pain, but what do I know?