Quilt for Nova Scotia

The Maritime Modern Quilt Guild put out a call asking for quilts after the terrible shooting in Nova Scotia in April, so I contacted a few other quilters in my town to see if they'd be willing to each contribute a few blocks so that we could send a quilt. Quilters being the amazing people they are, they said yes 😊

One of the ladies is a member of my beginner quilting class that was interrupted by the pandemic, but she has been sewing away on her own at home and sending me pictures now and then. She has definitely been bitten by the quilting bug. I told her when she finished her blocks for this quilt that she has been fully inducted as a quilter now that she has made her first charity quilt blocks 😊

To make things quick and simple, I chose the same block I asked for after the fire 3 years ago. There was a real sense of deja vu when the blocks started arriving! I'm thankful there were only 38 blocks this time, not 4,000+.

The MMQG requested the quilts be blue and white, reflecting the colours of the Nova Scotia flag, so we made our blocks with white squares in the center and blue for the edges. It's such a beautiful colour combination, isn't it?

At first I thought about quilting a loop and hearts design, but decided at the last minute to go with a loopy meander instead. A quilt full of hearts feels a little more feminine to me and I wanted to use something more gender neutral. I quilted it with Aurifil 2600. Somehow that's always the perfect colour when you need to go over lots of different fabrics 😊

I had this Island Batik pinecone fabric, which they sent in one of my ambassador boxes last year. While I like it, I was never quite sure what to do with it since the print is larger than I usually use. It was perfect to use for this backing, though, along with a grey-ish solid to make it big enough.

Another of the ladies who made blocks has an embroidery machine, so she made the label for the back. Isn't it perfect? This is so much nicer than anything I could have done. 

The Nova Scotia flag also has yellow on it, so I used this yellow Island Batik fabric for the binding. I love the pop of colour at the edge.

The quilt is now on its way to Halifax and I pray that it will bring comfort to someone who was affected by the shooting. Wouldn't it be wonderful, though, if the world never again had a reason for such a quilt drive?

I did try to get outdoor pictures before mailing it off, but the wind wasn't really cooperating...

Make it a Habit

Devotion for the Week...

I find reading about forming and improving habits to be strangely fascinating. One thing I find interesting in James Clear's book, Atomic Habits, is one of his suggestions to help make a new habit stick. Clear says that we must connect the new habit to our identity. "To change your behavior for good, you need to start believing new things about yourself. You need to build identity-based habits," Clear says. We do this by identifying the kind of person we want to be, rather than the outcome we want to see. So, 'I am an active person' rather than 'I want to lose 10 lbs.'

Now, just thinking 'I am an active person' is not going to make it true. It's not even going to make you believe it. What you have to do next is prove it to yourself by doing small things that move you in the direction you want to go. Using the 'active person' scenario, Clear suggests that those small things would start with buying a pedometer and then taking 50 more steps each day than the day before. Doing this would reinforce your new identity as an active person...and eventually help you lost the 10 lbs.

Did you know that God has a habit He wants His people to develop and that He even presents it to us as an identity-based habit? Peter wrote, "you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. For the Scriptures say, 'You must be holy because I am holy'" (1 Peter 1:15, 16). 

Try saying to yourself, "I am a holy person." Does it feel as fake to you as it does to me? I mean, I know all the times I have messed things up and acted not-holy. But God calls us to be holy, to have that as our identity and as a habit.

To use James Clear's plan, we need to move ourselves in the direction we want to go - towards being holy. That means we need to find things we can do that prove to ourselves that we are holy. What could those things be?

There are plenty of times when we could choose to respond with the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self-control) rather than responding with anger, complaining, impatience, etc. If someone hurts our feelings, we can forgive them rather than holding a grudge. Most of all, we can walk with the Holy Spirit, allowing Him to shape and direct our reactions and responses to life.

Background quilt is Formal Garden

All of these things will serve two purposes. First, they will allow us to prove to ourselves that we are, in fact, holy. Not because we are so wonderful, but because we are allowing the Holy Spirit to change us. Second, once being holy becomes a part of our identity and being holy has become a habit, we will find that it becomes easier to react in a holy way in any given situation.

Changing habits isn't easy, by any stretch, but it is worthwhile. Just imagine how true that is when the habit is one that God wants us to have.

Celebrations

Devotion for the Week...

This past Friday was Aiden's graduation day. It did not look anything like what we have always expected it to be. Schools are still closed and gatherings of more than 10 people are banned, so there was no in-person graduation ceremony. Family who were supposed to come to celebrate with us had to stay home.

It wasn't all bad, though. Local businesses stepped up to mark the day, with several offering gifts to the graduating students, and people decorated their homes with balloons and messages of congratulations. The parents of the grads arranged a time to meet up and drive in a parade of sorts around town and the grads worked together to create a video of them wearing their suits and dresses. There were no graduation caps for them to wear, but one of the other grad's moms arranged for someone to make them all masks.

We used our tripod and the timer on Paul's phone to get some family pictures. Mom was supposed to have been our photographer for the day and I'm sure her pictures would have been better, but we did okay 😊 (BTW, those little flecks of white are teeny little hailstones or snowflakes or something...it was cold, but not cold enough for it to be snow, but it felt more like snow than hail, so who knows?)

I made my dress! It's the Tessa sheath dress from Love Notions (affiliate link)😊

 The teachers who had been working with the students to plan the graduation ceremony switched gears and created a "virtual grad" with all the speeches recorded on video and put in Google Classroom so we could watch them. It was nicely done and as close to the real thing as we could get. Even though it wasn't 'right' it felt good to be able to celebrate Aiden's accomplishment as a high school graduate.

For some reason, thinking about celebrating the graduation kept bringing to mind Miriam's celebration after the Israelites crossed the Red Sea. Here's a super condensed version of the story: The people had been slaves in Egypt, then the Lord had rescued them, but Pharaoh changed his mind and chased them to get them back. God parted the waters of the Red Sea so the Israelites could cross on dry land to get away from Pharaoh, and when Pharaoh and his chariots tried to cross God let the waters return to normal, drowning them.

"Then Miriam the prophet, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine and led all the women as they played their tambourines and danced. And Miriam sang this song:

'Sing to the Lord,
    for he has triumphed gloriously;
he has hurled both horse and rider
    into the sea'" (Exodus 15:20, 21).

The Israelites had thought they were goners, that they were caught between the uncrossable Red Sea and Pharaoh with his chariots, but God intervened and saved them. I love how the movie Prince of Egypt shows them crossing on a narrow strip of bare sand between two massive walls of water, with fish and whales swimming in the water next to them.

Background quilt is New Life

I feel like Miriam just couldn't hold back after she realized that God had saved them and they were really, truly free. The music and dancing burst out of her in celebration and she had to let it all out.

Sometimes you just have to celebrate! Things don't look quite like we thought they would, but there are still things worth celebrating. The celebrations probably won't look quite the same, either, but that doesn't mean we should hold back. What have you found to celebrate lately?