Constellation TGIFF

Hello and welcome to TGIFF! It's time to do our happy dances to celebrate whatever we've been able to finish this week. We all love to start new things, but there's something so wonderful about a finish, isn't there?

If this is your first time here, please consider signing up for my monthly Bulletin, which goes out on the 16th of each month with some updates from here plus a recipe and some fun things to make. And have you seen my Medallion Magic QAL? It's only just beginning and I'd love to have you join in and quilt along with me!

This week I finished my Constellation pullover and it is so wonderfully comfortable. I won't be winning any modeling awards and my 16 year old son won't be winning any photography awards, but we can only work with what we've got, right? 😄

 The Constellation Hoodie is by Tami of Love Notions. It's a well written pattern, with several variations, plus there are tutorials for a few more that were shared during a SAL last week on Facebook. There's also a men's version and a kid's version, so you could easily outfit the whole family. She has a huge FB group that is wonderfully responsive and encouraging, which was a nice bonus as it's great to be able to ask questions of people who have already made the pattern. It also serves her well in that now that I keep seeing people making her other patterns I'm more and more tempted to buy those too, lol.

I chose to make the collared version, rather than the hooded version. I've never really been a fan of hoods on my sweatshirts, so it's nice to have the option to leave that off. I went with the curved hem rather than the banded hem this time, but I could easily see me making the banded hem version sometime. I seriously doubt this will be my last Constellation!

I used a french terry fabric and when I ordered it from L'oiseau Fabrics, I had no clue what to expect. That has been one of the biggest hurdles for me when it comes to sewing more garments and especially knit garments. I just have no idea what different fabrics will feel like or how heavy they'll be. The french terry is a bit lighter than I was expecting, but that works since I'm usually the last person in the room to be cold and a lighter sweater will be just right most of the time.

I love the contrasting fabrics, but next time I might choose not to have the contrasting fabric on the pocket. I think it might be better if the contrasting fabric were on the bodice. I also love the bright pink zipper!

This was my first time putting in a sleeve and putting a cuff on a sleeve and I am so pleased with how they turned out! I *may* have had to redo the first one of both because I managed to sew them on inside out, but I got it right in the end, lol.

The last thing I did was the hem, for which I used a twin needle for the first time ever. However, I didn't really think it through and the nice twin lines of stitching ended up on the inside while the "bottom" zigzag line is on the outside. Oops! At that point, I had used the seam ripper enough times that I just shrugged and decided it would be a design element. I'll get it right on the next garment!

Unfortunately, within hours of finishing it, I managed to flick brown candle wax onto it 😟 I removed the wax easily enough by ironing the spots with paper towel over them to absorb it, but the colour remained. I sprayed it with Shout and washed it, but they're still there. You may have noticed them in the previous pictures. They're pretty conspicuous.

I asked for suggestions for removing them on Instagram and received quite a few. I also asked my mother, who suggested peroxide and dish soap. I looked online for how much of each to use and found this recipe, which is what I'm trying first. Fingers crossed that I can get the stains out because it's not wearable as it is, except around the house.

So that's what I've finished this week! What have you finished? Link up below and be sure to visit a few of the other links as well to share in the celebrating.


Inlinkz Link Party

January One Monthly Goal Complete

I'm coming in under the wire, but last night I managed to finish the quilting that I set as my One Monthly Goal, hosted by Patty at Elm Street Quilts 😊 I had set the goal with two parts: to finish the quilting on at least one more first responder quilt and to get a count of how many quilts I have on hand and how many quilts still need to be finished in order to finally give the quilts to our town's first responders. (For those who don't know/don't remember, all of the blocks for these quilts were donated in a HUGE wave of support after a senior citizen's home across the road from us burned down almost two years ago.)

Here's the most recently quilted, but not yet bound, quilt. I quilted it with my go-to loopy design in Aurifil 2600.

Then today I pulled out all the stacked quilts and attached a slip of paper with the name of one of the first responders to each one. Here they are all together. Don't they look fabulous stacked up like this?

This stack contains 26 finished quilts and 2 that are quilted, but not yet bound. There are another 2 quilts with a longarmer in town who is going to quilt them for me, for a total of 30. At the time of the fire, we had 31 first responders. 31! That means only 1 more quilt to go!! And I have the top and backing pieced for it, it just needs to be quilted 😊

When I wrote my One Monthly Goal post back at the beginning of the month, I was thinking that I'd also make quilts for the new RCMP and fire fighters, but when I messaged the fire chief about that he said that, while he appreciates it, it isn't necessary to include the new people. And since including them would mean piecing and quilting another 6 quilts, which would take me months since I'd have to fit it in around all of my other obligations, I'm inclined to agree with him.

I am excited to be almost finished this project! It has been such a wonderful project and it was amazing to experience firsthand the generosity of this wonderful quilting community, but it will be nice to be finished and to cross it off my to-do list, finally. Giving the quilts to the first responders will also free up a bit of space in our house, lol.

I have a couple of other things I need to finish before I can quilt that last quilt, but you can be sure I will be getting to it as soon as I can 😊

A Good Name

Devotion for the Week...

A few years ago I was in a store with another person when we ran into an acquaintance. The person I was with asked about the other woman's kids and she said that one of them was having trouble with some of the girls in her class. "Well," she said, "It's really only one girl. Everyone else just follows her."

The person I was with, who also knew the class, said, "Let me guess," and said a name, which the mom confirmed was the right girl.

That conversation has stuck with me all this time because it made me sad that this young girl had already developed such a negative reputation that her name was the first to come to mind.

Proverbs 22:1 says, "A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold." Obviously, a good name isn't referring to how much we like the names we were given at birth, or how melodious they sound. It refers to how other people think of us, our reputations, how we are known by those who interact with us and by those who have only heard about us from others.

What sort of person would people have to be talking about for our names to be the first to come to mind?

None of us are perfect and we've all said or done things we regretted, but what is our overall reputation? This matters, not only for our own benefit and our own good name, but also for the benefit of the gospel.

As Christians, we are ambassadors for Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20), which means that our names in our communities have an impact on His name in the community, too. How others view us because of our actions and our words will impact how they view Jesus. Isn't that a sobering thought?

In our interactions with others, do they see His characteristics? Do they see His love, His compassion, His mercy and kindness, His patience and grace in the things we say and do? Or do they see our selfishness, our anger and our impatience and then equate that with the name of Jesus, whom we claim to serve?

We bear Christ's name along with our own. Whatever our reputations may be, those who know we are Christians will link our names with His. Does that help His reputation in our communities or hinder it?