TGIFF - Fidget Blanket

Welcome to TGIFF! 

If this is your first time here, then an especially big welcome to you 😊 I'd love to have you sign up for my newsletter, The Bulletin. If you do, I'll send you a link to download my Wind Farm quilt pattern, which is only available to subscribers. Then I'll pop into your inbox on the 16th of each month with a roundup of fun things to make, a family favourite recipe and news from here on my blog. I hope you'll join me!

I have a fun, quick project to share today. I was asked to make another fidget blanket for a special needs teacher to use with her students. She specified that she wanted it to be fairly gender neutral, and with not too many colours, so I chose this fun rocket print (from Connecting Threads a few years ago) for the outside. Those of you who remember my first fidget blankets may remember that I used the rockets for one of them too. It's one of my favourite kid prints 😊

The blankets are 12" x 17" and close with a button and loop (made from a hair elastic). I layered the inside, outside and batting together, stitched around and then turned it all right side out and stitched around it again. Attaching all of the activities acts as quilting to hold everything together in the center.

Here's the inside. I stuck with the same activities as in the other fidget blankets. There are ribbons for weaving, a zipper, laces to tie, a button to slide on a ribbon and a couple of different buckles for repeated opening and closing. There is also a velcro closed pocket and a button panel. I used the automatic buttonhole maker that came with my machine, but I do need to do a little more practicing to get the buttonhole properly centered.

 There's a little rocket surprise inside the button panel.

And a little star on a ribbon inside the velcro pocket.

That's my finish for this week and now it's your turn! Link up your finishes below and then be sure to visit some of the other links and help them celebrate their finishes too 😊

An InLinkz Link-up

Murrina Quilt - Stash Statement Blog Hop

Have you seen Stash Statement, the new book by My Quilt Infatuation's Kelly Young?

The book is absolutely beautiful and I was honoured when Kelly asked if I'd be part of the blog hop to introduce each of the quilts. I chose to make Murrina, after being assured by Kelly that it is much easier to make than it looks. Thankfully, she was right!

All of the quilts in the book are made by sewing scraps together to make large improv panels that are then cut to the sizes needed. You can read my thoughts on sewing the scraps together here. The short version? I really enjoyed the process and I'm looking forward to doing it again, especially since my scrap bag is still full and there are other quilts in the book that I want to make.

And now, after many sneak peeks, here's my finished Murrina quilt 😊

 With all the negative space in this design, I knew it would be a great place to highlight a beautiful batik and I'm so glad the people at Island Batik agreed to send me all of this loveliness.

I debated whether or not to share the story behind this fabric choice since it makes me look foolish, but in the interests of keeping it real, here goes...When Katie at Island Batik agreed to sponsor the background and backing, she asked which fabric I wanted and I immediately sent her the SKU number for a gorgeous blue. A few days later I wanted to check something about the fabric, which is when I realized I had sent her the WRONG NUMBER! I was looking at thumbnail pictures of the fabrics and I had copied the number below the picture when I should have taken the number above it. Insert forehead smacking emoji here. After a few moments of staring at my computer in disbelief, I ran to my stash and pulled out a length of pink and threw some of my scrappy blocks on it to see if they'd work with what I had accidentally requested. To my relief, it did work. Phew. Even better, I loved the fabric when it arrived!

And, since I had made my scrappy blocks with no plan for what I would use as the background, there are a lot of blue scraps in them. That might have made the blocks a little less distinct, as you can see happens when some reds or pinks are at the edge of the blocks.

I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly the top came together, even with Kelly's assurances. It looks like a complicated quilt, but it isn't at all. There are a lot of pieces, but some of them are really big, so it doesn't take long to piece a big block 😊

With some Warm and Natural batting and Aurifil thread (2600 for the blocks and 2530 for the background), it was time to get quilting. I quilted around the edge of each snowball block and then worked my way in to the center in a spiral. These small snowball blocks were satisfyingly fast to quilt!

I already wrote about quilting those straight lines, so I won't say much about that here. I will say that a few people suggested that lowering the pressure on my presser foot would help with the pleats, but unfortunately that isn't an option on my machine. I guess I'll just have to be more careful as I plan my quilting in the future.

While I was quilting those many lines, I found this...

I have no idea how it happened, though it looks like it was either the water erasable pen I was using to mark registration lines, or the edge of the ruler I was using to keep them straight, since it is exactly on the drawn line. Neither makes sense, though. I have felt all along the ruler and can't find any sharp spots and the pen has a soft tip, so I can't see it tearing the fabric. A few deep breaths later, I kept quilting while I pondered how I would fix the problem.

Eventually, I decided to cut a heart out of the background fabric and glue it over the tear. I used the pen to outline the edge of the heart so that I could see it and then I stitched twice around the edge.

Here's how it looks after the pen marks were washed away.

You can't see it from a distance, so it's a little surprise detail for anyone who looks really closely 😊

Also while I was quilting, I was on the lookout for teeny little pieces in the snowball blocks. Because the scraps were pieced in large chunks and then cut to size, some of the pieces are ridiculously small. Here are some of my favourites...

A scrappy binding seemed the perfect way to finish this quilt, so I pulled out my bag of leftover binding pieces and joined them together. I left out any red or pink pieces, so the binding wouldn't disappear into the background, but anything else was fair game.

I purposely didn't join two pieces that were the same colour, just to keep it looking really scrappy. And then, when I stitched it to the quilt, the ending piece and the starting piece were both black with white dots! Go figure. I (very briefly) considered cutting the last piece off and adding in another fabric, but that seemed like too much work when I was so close to finishing, so the two black and whites meet. Oh well!

Thanks for inviting me to be part of the blog hop, Kelly! I had so much fun making this quilt and you can be sure I'll be playing with this improv technique again 😊

Yvonne, at Quilting Jetgirl, has also made a version of the Murrina quilt, so be sure to check that out. Her quilt and mine are nothing alike (judging from her progress pictures) so I can't wait to see it!

Phew! This has been a really long post, hasn't it? Well, this is it for me, but I highly recommend you hop around to everyone else who has made a quilt from Kelly's book. But be warned - you may find yourself highly inspired to play with scraps, lol! Here's the full schedule:

4/16- Grand Bazaar    Shelley @ Cora's Quilts

                                    Connie @ Freemotion by the River

4/23- Louvered  Lindsey @ Primrose Cottage Quilts 

                           Diann @ Little Penguin Quilts

4/30- Precarious  Jess @ Quilty Habit                       

                             Myra @ Busy Hands Quilts

                                                            

5/7- Beach Retreat  Sarah @ Sarah Goer Quilts                               

                                 Liz @ Savor Every Stitch 

                                                           

5/14- Fire Pit   Alison @ Little Bunny Quilts                                          

                         Preeti @ Sew Preeti Quilts

                                                            

5/21- Detour    Laura @ Slice of Pi Quilts                         

                         Shelley @ The Carpenter's Daughter Who Quilts

                                                            

5/28- Murrina    Yvonne @ Quilting Jetgirl             

                            Leanne @ Devoted Quilter

                                                            

6/4- Scattered    Jayne @ Twiggy and Opal                      

                           Christine @ Triangles and Squares 

                                                            

6/11- Bloom Chicka Boom   Chris @ made by ChrissieD            

                                               Michelle @ From Bolt to Beauty

                                                            

6/18- Regatta   Susan @ Quilt Fabrication                             

                          Debbie @ A Quilter's Table    

                          Christa @ Christa Quilts

                                                            

6/25- Catch a Falling Star  Cynthia @ Quilting is More Fun Than Housework        

                                              Anja @ Anja Quilts

                                                            

7/2- College Prep   Hilary @ by Hilary Jordan                 

                                Lori @ Crossquilt

                                                            

7/9- Take Flight (bonus digital pattern)  Kelli @ Seriously, I Think It Needs Stitches 

                                                                 Paula @ The Sassy Quilter


Have a great week!


Linking up with Sarah's Show Me Something Improv

Yeast

Devotion for the Week...

There are lots of times when I think, "Who was the first person who figured out that if you do this and this and this then you can eat the result?" For example, have you ever read the process to get coffee beans you can use to make yourself a drink? It involves picking beans, removing a slimy layer, washing and drying the beans. And that only gets you to the point where you can start roasting them. Who ever came up with all of those steps?

Likewise for chocolate. You start with a pod, from which you remove the bean, which has to be dried. Then you can remove the nib, which has to be ground and liquefied to produce chocolate liquor, which is only the starting point for making chocolate we would recognize. Who was the first person to look at that pod and think of working with it for so long to produce a sweet treat?

Yeast is another one that interests me, though there isn't actually any documentation to show how it began being used to make bread. Researchers think it probably came about because a mix of flour and water was left longer than usual, which allowed the naturally occurring yeast to begin to grow, which made the bread rise when it was baked. But how did people get from that to the bread we eat today? I remember reading stories about how people heading to the Yukon during the Gold Rush would carry their bread starter in a jar inside their clothes. It had to be kept warm because having that starter meant having the beginnings of food. Whoever it was who first started using yeast, I am grateful to them! I love bread and I love baking different breads. I enjoy watching the yeast as it froths up in a bowl of sweetened water before the other ingredients are added and it has always amazed me how little yeast is needed to make a batch of bread that requires so many cups of flour.

When talking with His disciples, "Jesus warned them, 'Watch out! Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod.'" (Mark 8:15). The Pharisees had just been arguing with Jesus and "testing him, they demanded that he show them a miraculous sign from heaven to prove his authority" (v. 11). Frustrated with them, Jesus and the disciples left the area and it was when they were alone that Jesus warned the disciples.

As I said, it doesn't take much yeast to affect a lot of flour. Likewise, it wouldn't have taken many Pharisees to have affected a lot of common people. They were respected as the religious leaders of the day so the common, less learned people would have accepted the opinions of the Pharisees as being God's own. That would have been fine if the Pharisees were leading according to God's will, but they weren't. In Matthew 23, Jesus actually called them hypocrites, whitewashed tombs and snakes!

The Pharisees affected people not only because they were respected, but also because they were vocal. It's hard to ignore people when they're constantly repeating the same message. 'The squeaky wheel gets the oil' after all. And so the Pharisees constantly reminded people of the many regulations they must follow. They were outspoken in their disapproval, even going so far as to rebuke a woman after Jesus healed her on the Sabbath. Never mind that she was set free from the pain she had been living with for years, they were indignant because Jesus had done 'work' on the Sabbath.

So what was Jesus warning His disciples about? He was talking about the influence of people who would insist that things must be done their way, but they have stopped looking to God for direction. Beware of people who insist on their own self-serving view of the world and of God, who expect others to rigidly adhere to their rules and who have little or no concern for people.

These people still exist today and they still influence those under them, steering people away from God and towards their own interpretation of what God wants.

And as much as we are watching those in positions of authority, being certain that those we follow are following God, we also have to be mindful of our own attitudes. Are we following God? Or have we allowed our opinions to become rules we insist others must follow?

The yeast of the Pharisees is a dangerous thing. We don't want to be influenced by it, or to be guilty of becoming it.