Quilt for Seniors - Update

Checking the mail is like Christmas morning around here lately! Blocks have started rolling in for the quilts for the seniors displaced by the fire a couple of weeks ago, along with battings and fabric for backing and binding.

This incredible stack of 301 blocks all arrived on one day!

This gorgeous quilt top arrived the same day.

Not counting the complete top, I now have 634 blocks in my possession, with many, many more on the way. I have been completely amazed by everyone's generosity! I will have more blocks than I need for the 21 residents of the home, but that's okay. I'll just keep making and donating quilts until I run out of blocks! However, if this is your first time hearing about the block drive, I don't need more blocks, lol 😁

I've started grouping blocks together to make tops. 42 blocks per quilt, in a 6x7 layout that just fits on my kitchen table if I overlap the blocks. I'm trying not to stress too much over this part of the process. We all know it would be possible to spend an hour or more rearranging and switching out blocks for each quilt, but I don't want to spend that much time on each one. The goal is a pleasing scrappy arrangement, not a perfect one!

I'm really enjoying looking closely at each of the blocks and especially enjoying when I come across a fabric that I have in my own stash. And I'm finding plenty of fabrics I wish were in my stash! It's also fun to see the eclectic mix of traditional and modern prints, novelty prints, batiks, reproduction prints...you name it, I probably have some of it in these blocks!

I will have help sewing the tops together (thankfully!) so for now I'm just creating bundles of 42. That way I can either give them to someone to take home and sew or I can take them to the sew-day I'm planning to have at our church in May.

 Once again, quilters have proven themselves to be wonderful, generous people. I am so happy to be part of such a fantastic community! I'll be sure to share more updates as the quilts start coming together 😊

Continually

Devotion for the Week...

I know of a young mom-to-be who has "cervical problems," as it was described to me. That, of course, means there is the potential of complications to the pregnancy. Since hearing about this, mom-to-be and baby have been weighing heavily on my mind.

Sometimes I pray what I would consider a "proper" prayer for them, a prayer where I am focused on talking to God and I pray in full sentences that make sense. It's the kind of prayer that could be considered part of a conversation.

Other times mom-to-be pops into my head while I'm in the midst of something and my prayer sounds more like "Please, God." No context, no complete sentences, nothing more than the vaguest of requests. But God knows exactly what I'm thinking and what I'm asking for. Psalm 139 says, "You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely" (Psalm 139:1-4). I find it comforting to know that God knows what I mean when all I have time for is one or two words in prayer, don't you?

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 says, "Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus." Other versions say "pray without ceasing." On the other hand, Paul wrote in 2 Thessalonians that one of his guiding philosophies was "The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat" (2 Thessalonians 3:10). Nowhere in the Bible are we told that we are to do nothing by pray. We are to be working hard, serving God and others, earning the food we eat, even while we are also praying continually. You would think the two are contradictory, but they are not.

In fact, I think my "Please, God" prayers are exactly what He means when He tells us to pray continually. Not that we need big, long "proper" prayers all the time, but that prayer is a natural extension of our everyday thoughts. Praying continually means that when something pops into my head I can pray about it then and there, no matter what else I'm doing, or where I am or who else is around. No matter how brief my thoughts might be, God is always there and always paying attention, ready to listen and understanding exactly what I am thinking.

There is definitely a time for proper prayers. Definitely a time for sitting and spending time with God while not in the midst of doing anything else. But praying continually opens my mind to the fact that God is always with me. 

Praying continually means the lines of communication are always open, even when I have work to do.

You Know You're a Quilter If...

I've done a few things recently that made me kind of laugh at myself and think "that's the quilter in me coming out," so I thought I'd share my thoughts on our quilter idiosyncracies 😊

How many times have I done this? I'm barely even finished congratulating the person telling me their news and already I'm trying to decide which quilt pattern will best fit the situation. Or I'm wondering if I should design something especially for them. Or I know exactly what quilt to make, but I'm planning out possible colour combinations.

My mother-in-law watched me fold a load of laundry a few months ago and commented that she would iron all of those T-shirts before she put them away. I just laughed. Iron clothes? That doesn't happen around here unless someone is going to wear the clothes that day. I'm certainly not ironing anything that's being put away before being worn. And yet my iron is in such heavy use that it stays out on the counter all the time, lol.

This was me on our recent trip, except I had left my phone at the hotel so I actually made Paul take the picture 😊 I couldn't let the opportunity pass by, it was a great hexagon design! Which reminds me, I should probably get him to give me the picture...Oh, and my X Marks the Spot mini quilt pattern was inspired by a manhole cover. You can see the picture I took of it in this post.

Even just a day out of town means I have to stock my Sew Together bag for EPP, since any trip out of town requires quite a bit of driving time. And I always take way more than I need, because I really wouldn't want to run out of things to work on!

To me, this seems like such an easy gift to buy. Go into the fabric store, pick any of the pretty fabrics and it will be perfect. Any fabric would get used eventually, right? And since I could easily spend $100 every time I set foot in the fabric store, I know there's a lot there I want, lol. But I've been told (by my non-quilting husband) that buying fabric is hard. That doesn't stop me from always wanting fabric for gifts, though 😊


Those are my 5 ways to know you're a quilter, but what did I miss? How would you finish the sentence "You know you're a quilter if..."?