One of the quilts I've been thinking about while I've been trying to get past vertigo is this Everyday Patchwork. I was hand quilting it and had finished about a fourth to a third of it, then lost interest. I wondered why. I normally enjoy hand quilting but this quilt stalled—maybe for a year—so I've been hoping to get going on it again. Maybe not right away, though, because hand stitching and vertigo aren't exactly friends.
I had been marking each arc with pins before quilting and wondered if that was the problem. I decided to make templates so I could mark several fans at a time, or even a whole row.
I know I can buy ready-made plastic templates but I wanted one with the arcs 1 1/4" apart. I finally settled on using cardboard (maybe from a cereal or cracker box), using a protractor to make partial circles, each a 1 1/4" larger than the previous.
You can see the results here. They aren't evenly spaced! The outer and inner circles are just the right size but the middle one is a little small. I decided to either shift its template toward the larger arc or quilt on the outside of the line to even the distance between all three arcs. I used Prismacolor pencils to draw the lines on the fabric. It has washed out on other quilts so I think it will be fine. In fact, it may be too fine because part of several lines disappeared before I finished tracing several arcs. I also have some washable Crayola markers to try if the Prismacolors don't work.
Trying to do what I normally do while living with vertigo is no small challenge. I feel like my body is being held hostage, limiting me in so many ways. And the constant headache doesn't help, either. I went for an MRI yesterday and to a physical therapist today. After some tests, the PT confirmed that it's not positional vertigo and is likely vestibular neuritis just as the ENT doctor thought, though the PT also said that it could be caused by something else but wouldn't know until we see whether the exercises he prescribed help or not.
He suggested that if some particular actions (lying down, looking up) make me dizzy or feel like I'm spinning, I should repeat the movements at least several times, waiting for the dizziness/spinning to stop before repeating. The idea is that this will retrain my brain. Crazy!
This beautiful frozen kale greeted me on my way into physical therapy today. Flowers in the snow!
We had a beautiful snow, though it happened at night so I didn't get to see it falling. It was only about 4" but because it's so cold, it's lingering. I love it!
I hope you have a good weekend.
--Nancy.
I love how you're doing the Fans. The plastic templates never work for me. I hope you feel better and the vertigo subsides. I suppose it depends on cause/ treatment. As for retraining the brain, my doctors told me my severe double vision would resolve itself bec the brain retrains itself to see a single image. Three years later---4?---as bad as ever, worse when tired or stressed. My ex-husband did recover from his infection caused vertigo,b ut it took a long time, over a year and he also lost some hearing. Treated w prednisone.
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