Red Delicious Top and What I See

My blog is primarily sewing, sewing, sewing. But after hearing from so many that they are putting off cataract surgery, I have decided to write about my experience with it.

First, I am as squeamish about it as the next person. I am excited and anxious. Excited to see all the sewing things better and anxious because it’s my eyes! Yikes. My vision is still correctable to 20/40 with glasses and I COULD wait.

But.

But I always want to see better. I want to see all the colors crisp and clear and know that my color choices are true to what I am seeing. I want to see the edges of my applique better, where tone on tone meet and I am stitching tiny little blanket stitches. (I have been veering off a bit the past couple months and then having to unpick.) I want my threads to coordinate well with my fabric, so I am doing this.

It is not about getting rid of glasses, because I have severe astigmatism in one eye and non-binocular vision which means a prism in my right eyeglass lenses. Glasses will continue to be a regular feature on my face. When Dr Moore said that looking at the cataract in my right eye was like shining a flashlight through fog, I did not hesitate. Yikes! I am essentially seeing my work through fog and my sewing is too important to continue to look through fog when it is easily correctable.

Surgery day went well, the staff at the eye center was great. Went home and napped. Day 2 was uncomfortable, with a sore eye, double vision and halos. Yikes! My check up went well on day 2, however, and they said I was healing well. Day 3 my vision started improving. Day 4 the discomfort was gone and sight improved a bit. I did do some applique transfer and cutting Day 2 as keeping busy helped distract me. Sewed on day 3, 4 & 5, keeping occupied and productive with applique. My regular glasses are now useless, but I have a pair of prescription readers from about 7 yrs ago and can read and sew with them.

I was able to finish the Red Delicious top much to my delight! Block 11 is below.

Day 5 I added the borders and started looking at fabric for my next applique project. So excited to have this top completed. Sandwiching and quilting TBD.

This pattern, Esther Aliu’s Red Delicious, is done at 80% size and is now 45″ x 47″. I did not reduce the sashing, which are 1.25″ as that seemed narrow enough. Any narrower, and sashing becomes tricky!

The pattern calls for applique swirls where I have added vanilla grunge dot sections. I am leaving these areas free of applique in order to do nice big FMQ feathers in these spaces.

Thursday is surgery day 2. Wish me luck and happy quilting. Lennea