Jesse Tree QAL - First Blocks

Do you know Jen Frost of Faith and Fabric? If not, you should! She's hosting a Jesse Tree QAL that started this week. Every week for 5 weeks there will be 5 new blocks that represent our salvation story 😊 Then, starting November 29th she'll be sharing a devotion each morning until Christmas. Doesn't that sound like a great way to get ready to celebrate Christmas??

Since this is the first week of the quilt along, the first 5 blocks have been released. For now, at least, I'm all caught up. We'll see how long that lasts, lol. Along with making the blocks, I've enjoyed reading about Jen's story behind each of the block designs.

The Jesse Tree blocks are all paper pieced, so I'm using freezer paper to make mine. No more ripping out little bits of paper at the end! If you want to learn this paper piecing magic, I'll be teaching a virtual workshop with Watergirl Quilt Co on November 28th. You can sign up here.

The first block represents Creation. I actually missed one small green piece, but by the time I realized it I was too far along to bother going back to fix it. Jen designed the Creation block to show Pangaea - the way the land looked before the continents drifted apart.

Block 2 is an apple to represent the Fall. Fun fact, though we always associate an apple with the fruit Eve and then Adam ate, the Bible doesn't actually tell us what it was.

Block 3 is the Tower of Babel. I had to make some adjustments to the cloud after a piece I sewed on didn't actually cover the space it was supposed to and I didn't realize that until I had sewn on a couple of other pieces. Rather than ripping out seams, I changed an angle so everything was covered. Good things clouds don't have to be perfectly shaped! It was fun using this floral green and imagining the tower being built surrounded by a field of wildflowers.

Block 4 is Noah's Ark, along with the rainbow. The rainbow makes it such a happy looking block, doesn't it?

Block 5 represents God's promise that Abraham's descendants would number as many as the stars in the sky. I was super happy to be using freezer paper on this block. That's a lot of tiny pieces of paper I would have had to rip out otherwise! The block is actually square, but the many diagonal seams don't want to lay flat at all, so it doesn't look square unless I'm smoothing it out flat.

I haven't fully decided how I'll finish these blocks, but I do know I want to do something other than making a full quilt out of them. I'm considering finishing each block separately, so they could be hung on a line with clothespins. This really appeals to me, since a Jesse Tree is meant to be a story a day leading to Christmas. This way you could add one block to the display each day.

For now, that's 5 of 25 blocks done 😊 I've been having a lot of fun raiding my scraps for the blocks so far. Will you be joining in the quilt along? 

Time Change

 Devotion for the Week...

Next weekend the clocks will go back an hour. I've always been mildly entertained by the fact that we collectively agree that what was 2:00 am should revert to being 1:00 once a year, while collectively agreeing to move it forward in the spring. Time feels like a permanent force, marching steadily forward no matter how much we might want it to stop so we can preserve precious moments or avoid those that are painful, but inevitable. No matter how permanent time feels, though, next Sunday morning when I get up I will go through the house, changing the time on all of our clocks so that they match up to the new reality.

Time is really nothing but a human construct. At some point in our history we needed a way to divide the days into smaller increments and so the hour was born. Now it is so ingrained in us that we do almost everything according to what numbers the hands on the clock are pointing at.

God doesn't follow a clock. He's not confined to time at all, so not only are hours irrelevant to Him, so are days, weeks, months and years. Peter wrote, "But you must not forget this one thing, dear friends: A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day" (2 Peter 3:8). How we measure time has no meaning to the One who lives in eternity.

We might be waiting for Him to do something and we want it now, or at least at the specific time of our choosing. God, on the other hand, is waiting for His perfect time. In the New Living Translation, which I usually use, Galatians 4:4 says, "But when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law." In the King James Version, that same verse is rendered, "But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law." The fulness of the time means 'within the appropriate or destined time.' Who determined the right time, the appropriate or destined time? God, of course. Only He could know when it was the right time to send our Savior, just like only He can know when it's the right time to answer our desperate prayers today.

Background quilt is Formal Garden

It's not easy to wait, I know. It's not fun, either. But God doesn't make us wait out of maliciousness or because He thinks it's fun to watch us be sad or hurt or anxious. He does things on His schedule because only He can know when the fulness of the time has come. His time is always the right time.

Hand Stitching Projects X 4

I've started another hand stitching project 😊 Did I need another hand stitching project, considering the three I already had on the go? No, I did not! That didn't stop me, though!

Sam of Hunter's Design Studio put out a new line of embroidery patterns, including one using her Respect the Power Tool graphic, which I love. A while back she was selling hoodies with the same graphic on them and I really wanted one. If I remember correctly, they were $45, which seemed reasonable, but then I had to add international shipping and take into account the dismal Canadian-American exchange rate and by then the hoodie would have been over $100. Not quite so reasonable. As soon as I saw this new embroidery pattern, I knew I had to buy it and stitch it right away.

Jenny of Elefantz, adds bits of applique to her embroideries and they are all so, so beautiful. I decided to add a little applique to mine, too. I printed out the pattern at 150% to make the appliques a little more manageable and even still the scrap of teal Island Batik I used for the spool of thread is teeny tiny. I used a mottled black from Northcott for the sewing machine and another Island Batik fabric for the background.

This is where I am so far. I'm using Aurifil 12 wt for the stitching and I've started with 2930 to outline the sewing machine. It's pretty close to the gold details on my Singer treadle machines, which is what the shape Sam has drawn makes me think of.

My very first quilt featured fusible applique with blanket stitching done by hand, so it's fun to be doing that again. I love how stitching around the edge of an applique shape makes it look so different.

As for my other hand stitching projects, this seems like a good time for a little update.

We were out of town on Saturday for Zach's softball. I'm not sure how many sporting events there will be this school year as right now they're only allowing outdoor sports to have games between schools. The few indoor sports that will soon be starting are only allowed to have practices. But I digress. Between Zach's games, I pulled this star out of my Sew Together bag, where it has been folded for months, if not more than a year, pinned to its background and waiting to be stitched. Those fold lines did not want to flatten out!

Now it is finally stitched. It looks a lot better after a good press, too 😊

I still have another one in the bag, waiting to be stitched and it has been so long since I worked on these that I can't even remember how many I have finished or how many are left to go.

I also worked on my Hexie Rainbow quilt on Saturday. I now have all of the hexies for the second round of blue stitched together into rows and ready to be stitched to the main piece. I keep saying it will soon be too big to work on while we're driving, but I keep taking it and working on it, so I haven't reached that point yet.

When I started this, I planned to have the rainbow off center, like this. But now I'm thinking that I might prefer to have it centered. That would mean completing the purple rounds and shifting some rows of black from the right to the left and from the bottom to the top. It wouldn't make any difference to the total number of hexies in the quilt.

And lastly, my 2020 temperature quilt. I discovered I left out May 29th, which meant a bit of time with my seam ripper to open up the space to add it in, right above the safety pin in the picture. I have the May 29th block made, it just needs to be stitched in place and then I need to sew the rows back together. I have the rows finished up to August 17th. Yup, that's means I'm more than two months behind, again. It's a good thing there's not much of 2020 left for me to get even farther behind, lol.

Well, that should keep me busy, especially since that's not even considering the things I want to make that actually use my sewing machine (and there are plenty of those, too!) 😄