Hello from lancashire England
01-16-2019, 07:47 AM
#22
Super Member
Join Date: Aug 2018
Location: Peoria, IL -- Midwest Transplant
Posts: 7,293
Welcome to the boards. There are several of us here with failing eyesight. Still a lot of quilting we can do even if, as in my case, my best days are behind me. Back in November a friend gave me her used but very nice modern machine -- that automatic threader is great and the machine also has great lighting, it will keep me going for awhile yet.
My issue is keratoconus, the cornea/front of the eye is very pointy so I have super astigmatisms and no depth perception among other things, basically I'm losing my ability to focus. It's progressive and in my case doesn't appear to want to stop progressing, but even though I wake up completely legally blind I still have contacts that work. I currently have pretty good vision for the first 3 feet around me and it drops off rapidly after that but I have glasses so I can still drive. But 3 feet lets me play on the computer, cook and most importantly -- quilt! The "nice" thing about my form of blindness is I will always have light/dark and large shapes (a brown door in a white wall is a large shape), and colors. On-line I can enlarge print and change brightness levels and such.
In my quilting I've had to made a lot of adjustments, one is I use neutral but slightly contrasting thread so I have some hope of seeing it well enough to take out stitches if I absolutely have to. I used to be disdainful of what I call "fabric wasteful" techniques, like making triangles by stitching through the diagonal of a square, but nowadays I do a lot of that sort of thing, cutting big and trimming down to size.
My issue is keratoconus, the cornea/front of the eye is very pointy so I have super astigmatisms and no depth perception among other things, basically I'm losing my ability to focus. It's progressive and in my case doesn't appear to want to stop progressing, but even though I wake up completely legally blind I still have contacts that work. I currently have pretty good vision for the first 3 feet around me and it drops off rapidly after that but I have glasses so I can still drive. But 3 feet lets me play on the computer, cook and most importantly -- quilt! The "nice" thing about my form of blindness is I will always have light/dark and large shapes (a brown door in a white wall is a large shape), and colors. On-line I can enlarge print and change brightness levels and such.
In my quilting I've had to made a lot of adjustments, one is I use neutral but slightly contrasting thread so I have some hope of seeing it well enough to take out stitches if I absolutely have to. I used to be disdainful of what I call "fabric wasteful" techniques, like making triangles by stitching through the diagonal of a square, but nowadays I do a lot of that sort of thing, cutting big and trimming down to size.
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