A Bouquet of Minis

Two weeks ago, on a Friday evening, our province was suddenly plunged back into lockdown because of a surge in Covid cases and the emergence of the UK variant in the province. All day Saturday I felt a general anxiety, which is very unusual for me, so I decided to spend the evening working on something small and bright, just for the fun of it. 

I drew up a simple flower in EQ8 then cut out 10 of them and fused them onto white backgrounds using Heat n Bond Lite. Since I was in comfort sewing mode, not quilt blogger mode, this is one of the few pictures I took of the process.

I had quickly come up with a list of 10 friends/family members I wanted to send the flowers to, so that helped with choosing colours. If I knew a person's favourite colour, that was what I chose for their flower. For the ones whose favourite colours I didn't know, I just picked fabrics that felt cheerful 😊 

Then, from Sunday to Tuesday I worked on turning the little flowers into mini mini quilts. I chose to back them with more white and cut scraps of batting to fit (yay for using more batting scraps!). To make the whole project faster, I opted not to bind the minis, instead using the turning method and stitching ⅛" from the edge to close the hole I used for turning.

I even remembered to add my labels before sewing them together! I'm also glad I thought to pin the labels out of the way before quilting the flowers so the label didn't get stitched into the quilting.

I outlined both layers of the flowers and the flower centers with free motion quilting. I chose to use just one colour of Aurifil 50 wt on each mini for the sake of simplicity and because I like seeing how the thread looks different on the different fabrics.

I'm so pleased with how they turned out!

Here they are laid out so you can see them all.

Of course, I love how the quilting looks from the back.

Here are the Aurifil colours I used: 1133 (orange), 4225 (purple), 2530 (pink), 2135 (yellow) and 5005 (teal).

A few of the flowers were dropped off by people's doors here in town and the rest have been put in the mail. It has taken me so long to get this post written that the mailed ones have started showing up at their destination already 😊

Making the flowers was the perfect fabric therapy, with the added bonus of surprising people with a little burst of colour. Plus, I enjoyed the process so much, these flowers will be my Quilt Block Mania block next week, sized up to make a 12" block 😊 Check back on Tuesday for the pattern!

Good From This?

 Devotion for the Week...

Here in Newfoundland we are a little more than a week into a second lockdown. When it was announced, it was scheduled to last two weeks, but I have a suspicion it will be extended. I would be happy to be wrong about that, but I don't think I will be 😊 When I shared about the lockdown on Instagram, Kata commented to say, "Hate to say it, but a lockdown, properly done, works." She's absolutely right, of course. If we're going to stop the spread of the virus, we have to stop moving around and interacting with so many people. A lockdown is the most efficient way to make that happen.

Unfortunately, that doesn't change the fact that a lockdown is brutally hard on businesses, on students and teachers who have to pivot to online learning, on people living in longterm care facilities and on people for whom home is not a safe place. All we can do is hope that people obey the lockdown rules, that the surge in cases can be dealt with and that we can then return to the pandemic version of 'normal' we have been in for the past while.

Kata's comment really stuck in my mind and as I mulled it over, I thought of Romans 8:28: "And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them." That is such a good verse, but such a hard one at the same time. 

Some people misinterpret the verse as saying that everything will always be good if you're a believer. That's not what it says at all! God never promised that we would avoid all sadness and all hardship. In fact, Jesus specifically said "Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows" (John 16:33).

Romans 8:28 actually means that God will use even the bad parts of our lives to create good for us. This is a beautiful promise! However, I've also found it to be hard to really grasp it because there are so many times we can't see how God could possibly make anything good come from bad situations. How does good come from chronic illness? How does good come from losing a child? How does good come from domestic abuse? Or substance abuse? I have no answers for any of those situations and so many more.

But it's not me (or you) who has promised to make good come from these things. Thankfully, God is not limited by our understanding or our perspective. Ephesians 3:20 says, "Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think." He can do infinitely more than we might ask or think. That's reassuring, isn't it? The fact that I can't see how good can come of a hard situation, doesn't mean that God can't.

We will deal with hard things. That's just a fact of life. But when those hard things come, we can cling to God's promise that He will somehow bring good from them.

A Show of Faith

Before I get into today's devotion, I want to be sure you know registration is open for Grace in the Meadow. The QAL and Easter devotional journey starts on Wednesday 😊

Devotion for the Week...

My husband is a Blue Jays baseball fan. He enjoys watching the new players brought to the team from the minor leagues and seeing how they perform as they adjust to the big leagues. Some live up to the hype they arrived with, others don't and still others come with very little hype and surprise everyone by playing consistently well. It's hard to know how they'll do until they're on the team for a while and have opportunities to show their skills.

There was an old man named Simeon living in Jerusalem when Jesus was born. This is how Luke describes him: "At that time there was a man in Jerusalem named Simeon. He was righteous and devout and was eagerly waiting for the Messiah to come and rescue Israel. The Holy Spirit was upon him and had revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen the Lord’s Messiah" (Luke 2:25-26). 

When Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the temple, Simeon saw the young family and he came over and took the child into his arms. He then said, "Sovereign Lord, now let your servant die in peace, as you have promised. I have seen your salvation, which you have prepared for all people. He is a light to reveal God to the nations, and he is the glory of your people Israel!" (vv. 29-32).

What strikes me about Simeon's reaction is that Jesus hadn't done anything yet. He was an infant! The only things he was capable of doing were maybe cooing in Simeon's arms or screeching as this stranger took him from his mother (because we know Jesus did cry, right?). What He did or didn't do in that moment didn't matter to Simeon, though. Simeon believed.

In the little baby he held, Simeon saw the fulfillment of everything God had promised. Once he knew that Jesus had been born, even though Jesus hadn't done anything noteworthy yet, Simeon was content to die, fully confident that God would finish what He had started.

What if we had that same confidence in God? There are times we see little glimmers that something we're waiting for may someday come to pass, like rookie baseball players who make a good play in their first game. But then we get impatient because we want what we want right now and those glimmers just show us how far we are from getting it. We want to see the end result immediately.

What if, instead, we be like Simeon and see those glimmers as the beginning of God's work, then trust that He will finish what He started?