Repetitive

Devotion for the Week...

I've been working on a new quilt for our bed and the first step, after cutting, was making 40 sets of 4 flying geese with the no-waste method. 40 sets of 4! That's 160 geese, so it's a lot of line marking, a lot of chain piecing, which I don't mind at all, and then a lot of pressing, which gets mind-numbingly boring very quickly.

Once it was time to assemble the blocks, I had to start pressing all of the seams open, which I find tedious because it takes so much longer than just pressing them to the side. Chain piecing is fast and efficient, but chain pressing those seams open is just repetitive and boring. It makes me glad I don't work on an assembly line, doing one small task for hours on end, day after day after day.

Sometimes it can seem like the job God has given us to do is repetitive and boring. We're just doing the same thing over and over and it doesn't seem like we're getting anywhere. It's like being stuck in an endless chain of seams to press open, except we can't see the end of the job because we're not in control of that part of it.

Often in the Bible, sharing the word of God is compared to planting a seed, but Paul takes it a step farther in 1 Corinthians 3:5-9: "Each of us did the work the Lord gave us. I planted the seed in your hearts, and Apollos watered it, but it was God who made it grow. It’s not important who does the planting, or who does the watering. What’s important is that God makes the seed grow. The one who plants and the one who waters work together with the same purpose. And both will be rewarded for their own hard work. For we are both God’s workers."

Paul planted the seed and Apollos watered it. I wonder if one or the other of them ever got tired of always doing the same thing, whether that was telling people about God or teaching them a little more than they already knew. Did they ever feel like they weren't really getting anywhere with the people they were teaching? After all, if Paul was always planting seeds that needed to be watered by someone else, then he wouldn't necessarily see the results of his work.

God has given each of us a role to play in teaching others about Him. For some of us, that's introducing people to Jesus. For others, it's helping new believers learn more about Him. For others, their hope, joy and perseverance through suffering attracts people and makes them curious about the source of that response. Whatever our role, it can sometimes feel repetitive and boring to be always doing that same job.

But the beautiful thing is that, whatever role we play, if we are faithful to continue doing the work, we can be sure that God will make those seeds grow.

When it's finally time for me to start putting blocks together into rows, it's magic to see the quilt start to come to life. Sewing the rows together is even more exciting as the secondary pattern emerges and I get to see the result of all of my work - a finished quilt top 😊

Whether we have been planting or watering the word of God in the hearts of others, when God makes those seeds grow it will be beautiful to see.

October Island Batik Challenge - Twirling Star

Note, the fabrics for this project were given to me by Island Batik as part of their ambassador program.

The October Island Batik challenge was to make any size project using paper piecing, either EPP or foundation paper piecing. Since I already have two hand stitching projects on the go, I chose to do foundation paper piecing, using my Twirling Star pattern. The double pinwheel blocks are paper pieced, while the hourglass blocks are not.

Twirling Star finishes at 19 ½" square and you can see the original version here. The two quilts look completely different!

The weather has been gloomy and wet around here lately, so I had to settle for indoor pictures. Thankfully, it's much easier to take indoor pictures of a mini quilt than of a big quilt.

I modified the Twirling Star pattern slightly, choosing to have only one background fabric and to use that same fabric for the border. To be honest, this was mostly because I was working with 10" squares of the fabrics I most wanted to use, and I didn't have a good coordinate in yardage. But it worked out well, I think! I really like how the stars and twirling pinwheels stand out against the white background, which is also from Island Batik.

I was really mixing up fabric lines in this mini quilt. The star points fabric is from the Paisley Dots line and I love the gorgeous teal. This was the only fabric for which I didn't have a coordinating Aurifil thread, so the star points are quilted using Gutermann polyester thread. It was fun quilting these wishbones to fill the triangles, though as you can see I didn't always do a great job of keeping them straight.

The smallest pinwheels are made from a fabric from the Victoria and Albert line, which was mostly pink, but there were a few spots of blue in the 10" square I had, so there are a couple of pinwheel points that kind of look like they're from a different fabric. My pink Aurifil (2530) doesn't blend in, but I like the contrast.

The larger pinwheel fabric is from the Vintage Morris line. Aren't the subtle green tones beautiful?

Both of the quilting designs I used in the pinwheels were super quick to stitch, which was really fun. I used Aurifil 40wt in 2902 to quilt the green pinwheels. It was my first time using the 40wt and I wasn't sure if I'd need to adjust tension or anything, but my machine was perfectly happy stitching with no adjustments at all. I didn't have the matching 50wt thread for the bobbin, so I used a cream 50wt. I figured it would show up nicely on the back and I  hoped it wouldn't poke through on the front at all, which it didn't.

This shot really shows the difference between the thickness of the 40wt on the green and the 50wt on the pink and white. The 40wt threads definitely sit on top of the fabric rather than sinking in, so they're much more noticeable. It's a nice effect, for sure. These elongating loops make me think of angel wings 😊

All while I assembled the quilt top and quilted the star points and pinwheels, I tried to decide how I would quilt the white background. Feathers? Swirls? Swirl hooks? Flow quilting? Nothing felt right. Then I thought of doing tiny stippling, which I immediately discounted because I don't particularly enjoy stippling, and there's quite a bit of background, even if it is only a mini quilt. The more I thought about it, though, the more it felt like it had to be the stippling. Sigh. At least I managed to do all of the stippling in two evenings, so that wasn't too bad.

I used a pink batik from the Foundations line for the backing which was perfect for showing off all of the quilting. Sometimes I like the back of quilts just as much as the front!

And of course, no quilt is complete without one of my labels 😊 I won these in a giveaway on Kelly's blog (My Quilt Infatuation) a couple of years ago and you'd still barely know I've used any. They are from Finer Ribbon, and there are 1000 labels on the roll, so they're going to last me a good long time, lol.

If you'd like to make your own Twirling Star, you can get the pattern from either my Payhip or Etsy shops.

It's hard to believe there are only 3 more challenges to go in my year as an Island Batik ambassador! I'm planning to apply again next year as I have really enjoyed working with these beautiful fabrics and the monthly challenges have been great creative prompts. I hope you're enjoying these Island Batik projects, too 😊

You Feed Them

Devotion for the Week...

One day last week I reread the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 (plus women and children so it was really a lot more than 5,000). It's a familiar story to most, if not all, of us, in which Jesus feeds a huge crowd of people with one boy's lunch of 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. I'll only share the beginning of the story here. Jesus had been teaching the crowd and healing their sick, when the disciples approached Him:

"Late in the afternoon the twelve disciples came to him and said, 'Send the crowds away to the nearby villages and farms, so they can find food and lodging for the night. There is nothing to eat here in this remote place.'

But Jesus said, 'You feed them.'

'But we have only five loaves of bread and two fish,' they answered. 'Or are you expecting us to go and buy enough food for this whole crowd?' For there were about 5,000 men there" (Luke 9:12-14).

Those disciples sure could get snarky at times, couldn't they? "Are you expecting us to go and buy enough food for this whole crowd?" Lol!

As much as I love their snark, that wasn't the line the captured my attention when I read the story this time. I kept coming back to Jesus saying, "You feed them." I'd read a few lines and my eyes would drift back up to those three little words. You feed them. Read a little farther in the story, then drift back up again. You feed them.

As I thought about those words throughout the day, I also thought of a couple of other verses. In 1 Corinthians, Paul wrote, "Dear brothers and sisters, when I was with you I couldn’t talk to you as I would to spiritual people. I had to talk as though you belonged to this world or as though you were infants in Christ. I had to feed you with milk, not with solid food, because you weren’t ready for anything stronger" (1 Corinthians 3:1,2).

The writer of Hebrews wrote, "There is much more we would like to say about this, but it is difficult to explain, especially since you are spiritually dull and don’t seem to listen. You have been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching others. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things about God’s word. You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food. For someone who lives on milk is still an infant and doesn’t know how to do what is right. Solid food is for those who are mature, who through training have the skill to recognize the difference between right and wrong" (Hebrews 5:11-14).

In both cases, teaching people about God is compared to feeding their physical bodies. Teaching them about God is feeding them spiritually, beginning with the simple truth of His love and progressing on to them learning to tell right from wrong on their own.

Obviously, in the story about the loaves and fish, Jesus was telling His disciples to feed the people physical food, but I couldn't get away from the thought that God also wants us to be feeding people spiritually. To be teaching them about Him, about how much He loves them, about Jesus' death on the cross and His resurrection, about salvation through faith.

We often feed other people physical food, whether it's our spouse, our children, extended family or friends, sometimes even strangers. Are we also feeding the people around us spiritual food? Are we teaching our children or grandchildren about how much God loves them? Do we share our faith with extended family, friends or strangers? That's food for thought, isn't it?

You feed them.