Success!

This morning I stepped the scale to see that I’ve lost 4.6 lbs since last Friday. I cannot tell you how thrilled I am about this. Even though I decided when I started this (again) that I would not obsess over it, I will admit that I’ve been weighing myself every couple of days to see if I was making any progress. I chose Friday to be my official weigh in day because a) I wanted some motivation to keep going through the weekend, and b) if I’m going to do any cheating, it’s most likely going to be on the weekend, which gives me time to make up for it the next week. Yes, I’m bad and I know it. But like I’ve been saying, this is not a diet for me; it has to be a new way of living and relating to food.

I’ve known people who give up just about everything they find tasty when they make a “lifestyle change” and if they can live like that, I applaud them. I know that I can’t do it. I enjoy the flavors that life offers – cheesecakes, steaks, sodas, etc. But I also am quite happy to eat steamed broccoli, chicken, fish and other foods that are supposed to be better for me. It isn’t that I necessarily disagree that these foods aren’t good for me – it’s that I don’t believe any food is truly bad for us, unless consumed in excess. I suppose that even eating too much broccoli may have some sort of downside.

Earlier this week, I read about Stacey Irvine, who at 17 years old, hasn’t eaten anything but McDonald’s chicken mcnuggets since she was 2 years old. Not being a big fan of most British foods, I can sort of see how something off a fast food menu might have its appeal to a young girl, but at the same time I am repulsed by mcnuggets because they are not very tasty in my opinion. This girl has been eating them for 15 years, which of course means she’s seriously lacking the vitamins needed to keep herself in good health. I don’t think anyone can look at her diet and say she’s eating well. But if you look at her picture, she isn’t overweight; she looks reasonably healthy. I would never ever recommend anyone eat a single nugget, let alone base their entire diet on it, but this girl is eating crap every day and her problem isn’t being overweight. In moderation, and in conjunction with a mostly healthy diet, one could conceivably eat a mcnuggets meal once or twice a month and probably not suffer any long term effects (though why anyone would want to do that is beyond me). The same principle would then apply to virtually any food or restaurant – when it isn’t your main source of nutrition, one can eat virtually anything on occasion and not suffer long term effects, least of all weight gain.

Where most people fail in this scenario is that they give themselves a “free pass” to eat whatever they want once, then again. And again. And again! I’m guilty of it. If I go on a business trip and I have no choice but to eat out, I will have a steak three nights in a week because “I don’t usually do this.” But then I’m also having a dessert every night because “I don’t normally do this” and a couple glasses of wine with dinner because “I don’t normally do this.” In a week, with that mindset, I can easily gain five pounds. And I’m weak; if I do gain that five pounds, I’m much more likely to decide that I can’t lose weight and it’s not meant to be than to admit that I’ve been eating crap all week and it’s my fault. Who wants to admit they made stupid choices?!

The things that have worked for me over the past week:

Not obsessing over whether or not I stay within my calorie limits. If I go over by a bit, I don’t really care. If I go over a lot, I take a look at what I did and what I could have done better. I’m trying to learn from my mistakes.

Measuring everything, either with a kitchen scale, measuring cup or measuring spoon. In fact, it’s worked so well I’m going to buy some measuring cups and spoons for the office.

Preplanning my meals. Knowing in advance what foods I plan to eat so I know about how many calories I will be eating. If it changes (as it did once or twice this week for dinner) I’ll adjust, but I found it incredibly helpful to write down what I intended to eat then checking to be sure I stuck to it after each meal.

Having some low-calorie high impact snacks around. I thought I didn’t care much for peanut butter, and when I tried the off-brand they offered at work, I was right. My husband encouraged me to try something from the grocery store (he loves pb) so I did – I tried Jif Reduced Fat and Peter Pan Honey Roast. I really liked them both, but the Honey Roast was the best. It has only 5 or 10 calories more for the one tablespoon I ate than the Jif, but the taste is oustanding. A regular serving size is two tablespoons, but when I’m pressed for calories, one tablespoon and some crackers or a banana really does help fill the void. I also really enjoyed the Special K Chocolately Pretzel bar this week – it’s 90 calories and totally satisfies my sweet tooth, though I must admit it didn’t do a whole lot for me when I was hungry. Coupled with some fruit, though, or maybe some Weight Watchers String Cheese (the best string cheese on the market, in my opinion), it was pretty good.

What I haven’t given up:

Dr. Pepper – at least, not entirely. I will admit that I was drinking way too much every day. Some days I would drink six cans. I’ve cut back considerably to two or three – three on the two days I had a migraine. I can’t really help it – I crave them when I have one. I would like to cut back to one or two, but for now I’m happy with the way things are.

Good food. My husband has jumped on the bandwagon, and we are looking for ways to maximize flavor without sacrificing calories. Last night, we sauteed three cloves of garlic in half a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of olive oil. Once the garlic was soft, we removed it from the heat and added two cups of steamed broccoli, half a cup of steamed carrots and a whole large steamed onion, sliced into big pieces. It was sooooooooooooo good. You cannot imagine! A cup had just about 115 calories, and it went very well with our grilled chicken and rice. I walked away full, satisfied and happy.

Ice cream. OK, so I happen to like the Weight Watchers and Skinny Cow ice creams – who cares?! For 140 calories,  I can have one (giant sized) Skinny Cow vanilla ice cream sandwich or a WW Giant Fudge Bar (mmmmmm) or a WW drumstick. For 200 calories, I can have TWO of the WW English toffee bars, which means one is only 100 calories.

I’m still not really exercising much – in fact, I really only exercised in the form of house cleaning on two days. But still, I lost 4.6 pounds! Yes, I know that much of that might be water weight, but it is STILL nearly five pounds gone. It’s five fewer pounds that I have to drag around with me everywhere I go. I’ll take that!

So, for the coming week, my goals are to make some things over the weekend for lunches and breakfasts for the week (have you tried the Fiber One Muffins? So good, and only 140 cals if you make them with applesauce). Try to move my body more in the form of some sort of exercise. And continue logging my food – I cannot tell you how helpful www.myfitnesspal.com has been for that. There are lots of “free” websites out there that you can use to log your food – I also like www.fitday.com – but I don’t think they are as user friendly or as helpful as MFP.

I may start posting some of my recipes here too … I’ve found that some of my recipes are surprisingly low in calories, and others I’ve tried that are low cal are fabulous. I might just have to share those …

 

Was it worth the effort?

OK, so I have mentioned that I made a quilt for my husband Chris – which neither of us liked once it was together. Well, the quilt pattern itself isn’t bad, but the fabrics are totally NOT him, so I decided to start over with the same pattern, different fabric. Here is the top of the one we didn’t care for much …

I made it on the suggestion of the owner of QuiltWorks, a local quilt shop close to home. She told me it was easy to put together and that it turns out beautifully – she even had two in the shop to prove what she said. What she failed to tell me was just how ridiculous the instructions are in the book, and how much I’d have to figure out on my own. It is indeed a simple quilt, but it’s NOT for the faint hearted nor the uninitiated quilter.

Written by Suzanne McNeill, the book is called Batiks Inspired by Bali. The quilts in the book are beautiful and I’d been wanting to make something using batiks, so I thought I’d give it a shot. I bought a “Bali Pop” – 40 fabric strips that measure 2.5″ by 44″, made by Hoffman Fabrics, one of my favorite companies. So I figured, good fabric, high recommendation from the LQS owner … what could possibly go wrong??

How about nearly everything? The instructions are horrible. It took me AGES to figure out McNeill’s “system” to sort the fabrics. Her quilt was made using the Bali Pop called Mint Chip. I used one called Cappuccino. I anticipated small issues based on this, but I’m not a new quilter; I thought I had this firmly in hand, NO PROBLEM! There were problems. Lots of problems. But once I got the sorting done, and started piecing the quilt, it went by quickly. And then I started to lay out the quilt. The instructions told me to cut six of the 14.5″ blocks into two pieces – one that was 7.25″ long and one that was 5.25″ long. But the layout diagram didn’t state which block was to go in what position. These “half” blocks were to go at the end of rows, and I couldn’t figure out why they should be different lengths when every other block was 14.5″ long and the rows were made of three full blocks and one abbreviated block. So I decided (wisely, I think) to cut the blocks in half. I could trim them if needed once I started sewing rows together but you certainly can’t add back fabric you’ve already chopped off.

I still don’t know why the cut blocks were to be two different lengths, because I saw no need for it. My blocks and rows went together very well and required no trimming. Eh … who knows?

So then I decided to make a second quilt using the pattern, thinking that I already had tackled the toughest part and I understood what I needed to do. This time, I thought (not so wisely), I’ll use yardage and cut my own strips! But I stood at my cutting tables for what seemed like days trying to figure out what to cut. As the minutes dragged by and nothing was being cut, the idea flitted through my head that I was losing my mind. I went to sit down and try to figure out what I needed to do. It took me some time but finally I figured it out and I started cutting. But again, I wasn’t using the exact fabric she did – this time I decided to use Moda marbles – one of my favorite fabric lines of all time. I did pretty well till I hit the “brown/green” print that she never called for in the yardage instructions. I have NO idea what fabric that should be … so now I’m stuck putting together all of the other color blocks until I figure out which one of these should be “brown/green” because “brown/green” is NEVER mentioned in the yardage requirements.

My head swims just thinking about it. And this is all from just ONE of the fifteen quilting patterns. I am terrified to look at any of the others for fear of what might happen next!

My suggestion to Ms. McNeill is to fire her proofreader/pattern testers and start over with someone who actually understands quilting. My suggestion to my readers is this – if you intend to make this quilt, I suggest you either be a strong quilter or else you find someone who can help you that is a strong quilter. This one could reduce even the stoutest quilter to tears …

 

Studio Time!

Anyone who knows me probably gets confused when I say “studio time” because not only do I like to quilt, but I am also an avid photographer. But the truth is, I don’t ever do “studio time” for photography; when I use that term, it’s all about the quilting. This weekend, I’ve had a fair amount of studio time … and that is what is on my mind now.

First of all, I haven’t really done anything in studio since I hurt my arm last June because just the act of extending it, then putting pressure on it to hold fabric in place while cutting, was very painful. It’s taken some time to regain strength in my arm, but now I think that I’m around 90-95% healed, and it’s definitely time to get back into the studio and start working on something new. Or rather, in this case, something old. Last year, just before my arm problem surfaced, my mom and I spent a glorious day shopping for quilting fabric, and we ran across this gem of a fat quarter bundle, which we split. This was my take from it.

I cut it up, getting ready to make a turning twenty around the block quilt. I’ve made this pattern before, more than once, actually, and it is so easy to go together. I can’t give details here, since it’s a copyrighted pattern, but I high recommend it if you need to put a quilt together in a minimum of time. Anyway, I’m about to start working on it again today (!) so maybe I’ll have pictures of the finished top for you soon.

Yesterday, I spent the day moving furniture around in the studio so I could get my computer in here (yes, I finally got it in here, after moving every single piece of furniture at least twice). Next weekend, which happens to be our first anniversary, I’m going to finally buy a chair I can use for both sewing and computing. For now, I have an inexpensive but very comfortable chair from Office Depot that will be Travis’s once I get my new chair.

Chris asked me yesterday what I want for our first anniversary. We decided to do non-traditional gifts this year (first year traditional is paper, just in case you don’t know) so I decided that I would like to get a start on my organizational plans for the studio. As you may recall, I wasn’t really thrilled with the way the plan turned out, so I plan to go back and have a new plan drafted, and I intend to be VERY specific about what I want this time. For example, I need solid shelving for books and knick knack type items, but I don’t need it for fabric storage. I know it’s going to take some time to be able to get it all done (IIRC, the closet alone was nearly $700) but I figure the anniversary gift will be a fairly decent start. I can then add a shelf or basket every payday, which occurs every week right now. So before long, I can have the entire studio done!

I am about to order the cutest fabric specifically for quilts for our game room. One quilt will be an “I Love Lucy” quilt, made from the Hollywood at Last fabric. The other is a “Gone With The Wind” quilt, which is one of my favorite movies of all time. You can find both fabrics – or at least some of the fabrics – at Hancock’s of Paducah. Thing is, if you don’t grab this type of fabric immediately, it’s gone before you know it. Fabric, like fashion, is usually a one season limited run. Most fabric is printed once and then … gone. So I’m grabbing mine while I can!

 

Playing with Quilt Designs

One of my favorite things about quilting is that two people can take the same pattern and come up with completely different looks, either through choice of fabric or by the way they set, or lay out, the blocks. It’s the interpretation of a particular pattern, or block, that makes it unique. It’s what gives the quilt character, and what reflects the personality of the person who made it. Unfortunately, it’s also the one place that so many people seem to fail at quilting.

I cannot count the number of times that someone has said to me, “I had this great idea, or at least, I thought it was a great idea, but when I actually tried it … well, it didn’t come out the way I thought it would.” Boy, do I know that feeling! Almost every quilter has experienced it, or will experience it, at some point. It’s inevitable, when one starts to depart somewhat from using patterns and begins to venture off into that brave and wonderful world of design. There’s usually a process that takes place as a quilter begins to venture into the wide world of design …

The first phase is the ‘easy’ quilt – the one that’s just a few block sewn together, or maybe a pieced block that doesn’t need a fancy setting. This is simple, and most quilters can do this without a lot of trouble and almost no assistance.

The second phase happens when the quilter realizes that the design she has in mind is slightly more complicated. Out come the graph paper and colored pencils, and a slightly more complicated, but still fairly simple idea is turned into reality. A quilter might find herself surrounded by crumpled sheets of graph paper, but in the end, she figures out her design and finds success in this method.

The third phase – or as I like to call it, The Beginning of the End – occurs when the design is far too complex to easily render on graph paper, or when it has so many lay out options that the colored pencil method is no longer practical. Enter Electric Quilt.

Electric Quilt is this great program that’s been in production for probably 15 years or so – it’s long been used by people around the world who want the flexibility of changing things in their design without having to worry about causing eraser holes in their graph paper. But the truth is, the learning curve is not insignificant, at least, not up through version 5.0. That’s the version I have, and I won’t lie – I have had it for about five years, but I’ve used it little, until recently.

Confession: I love computers, software, gadgets – anything that can be considered electronics. So when I heard that there was a new version of Electric Quilt, I decided immediately I wanted it. I can’t really tell you why, except that it seemed really cool and I wanted it. Then reality set in and I thought, It’s crazy to spend that much money on a program that I don’t even know how to use and have put little effort into learning. Not one to be deterred by such minor facts, I pulled out my copy of EQ, installed it on my new computer (after making sure it was gone from the old one), and set about learning to use it. You see, I won’t be beaten by something as minor as not knowing the software.

Over the last several days I’ve had the opportunity to play with it, extensively, and I keep asking myself one question …

WHY DIDN’T I DECIDE TO FIGURE THIS OUT BEFORE NOW?!?

It’s still quite daunting, learning to use this program, but all in all, I am loving it. I designed a quilt block in the colors I wanted to use, then “set” the block in the predetermined layout that EQ offered. I could turn the blocks however I wanted them turned, I could add or remove borders, I could change colors throughout the quilt in a single click … I am, in short, addicted to EQ.

But I’m still not ready to upgrade just yet. Instead, I fully intend to attempt to purchase as many of the “stash” collections as possible, which will allow me to choose actual fabrics from a wide variety of designers. Fortunately, it will work with either 5.0 or 6.0, so when I upgrade EQ I won’t lose the stash. Two stash collections are produced twice a year – once in the spring and once in the fall, at a suggested price of just $25 each. Yeah, I think I can swing that!

My first trial was a log cabin block in black and tan … I have set the blocks in a large, king sized quilt in a variety of ways, giving me and my husband the chance to look at them all and consider many different looks. It’s much easier than trying to visualize or verbally convey an idea before even having the fabric in hand.

One thing I haven’t figured out yet is how to export my designs to a picture form. When I do, however, I will be sure to post the different variations for folks to see … I’d like to hear what people think about the choices we have!