The Fruit of the Spirit

Devotion for the Week...

I am not much of a gardener, though I would absolutely love to have a huge vegetable and fruit garden. On Saturday I planted some rhubarb from a neighbor who was dividing his, so now I have that to go along with the strawberries I've been growing for a few years. I'm also planning to put in some tomatoes, once it warms up enough. Around here it's not safe for such tender plants for another couple of weeks. Newfoundland has a very short growing season!

I've always wanted apple trees, but right now the yard is often used as a soccer field/football field/general running-around-with-friends-and-lightsabers field, so the apple trees will have to wait. Someday, though.

This week I'm starting a new devotion series. Rather than focusing on the fruit in my garden, we'll be focusing on the fruit of the Spirit, as listed in Galatians 5:22,23 "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law." This week is an introduction, and then each week, for the next nine weeks, I'll take an in-depth look at one of the character traits listed.

Love, joy, peace, forbearance (or patience), kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. All nine are traits that we admire in others, traits that we wish we had in more abundance, am I right? Well, Paul is telling us that these nine character traits can be ours if we allow the Holy Spirit to lead us. Earlier in the same chapter, he wrote, "So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want" (vv. 16,17). 

It is not that we need to work harder to grow love, joy, peace, etc. in our lives. No, we need to walk by the Spirit, and as we do so we will begin to turn away from the things that are the opposite of these nine character traits. Walking by the Spirit means that we listen for the Spirit's prompting when we have decisions to make, even little decisions like "should I say this?" Even more importantly, we obey those promptings of the Spirit. I admit that there are times when I want to say something, but I feel like I shouldn't, but then I still say it anyway. That is not walking by the Spirit!

If we are willing to walk by the Spirit, then these nine character traits will grow in our lives. Interestingly, though, they are not nine different fruit! The Greek word used in the original is singular, meaning all nine character traits are part of one 'fruit' which is produced by the Holy Spirit in us. That means that if we want to be fruitful, we can't pick and choose which traits we will grow, allowing ourselves to show love, while refusing to also exhibit self-control, for example. Though obviously we can live like that, we are not then properly allowing the Spirit to grow His fruit in us.

There have been times when I've been picking strawberries and picked what looked like a perfect strawberry on one side, only to turn it around and discover the other side is still unripe, or has gone moldy or been eaten by bugs. Yuck! I only want to eat strawberries that are perfectly ripe and good all the way through. If we imagine the fruit of the Spirit as some exotic fruit with nine sides, then we want all nine sides to be equally ripe and free of mold!

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. This is the fruit I want in my life!

TGIFF - A Finish of a Different Sort

Welcome to Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday! If this is your first time here, then a special welcome to you :) I'd offer you a cup of tea and a muffin, if I could. Since I can't, I hope you'll consider signing up for my monthly newsletter, The Bulletin, where I share news from me along with fun things to make, including a favourite recipe to fuel your sewing.

My finish this week is completely different from my normal sort of projects. No fabric at all, even!

For Christmas, my sister-in-law gave us this beautiful plaque that she made.

Her husband cut the boards, she painted them and then used a paint marker for the words. Didn't she do a beautiful job? Nancy's talented like that, with anything she decides to try. As soon as I saw it, I knew I wanted to copy her technique, right down to getting my husband to do all the cutting, gluing and nailing of the boards! I'm not exactly comfortable with power saws.

 
I saw this phrase on a sign in an Etsy shop a couple of years ago, but the shop doesn't ship to Canada, so I've been trying to come up with a way to make something similar ever since. This was exactly what I wanted. I used Canva for the fonts and to position the words. Then I used an old fashioned projector and traced the letters onto the painted boards. This hangs in our entryway, where we get to see it all the time.

I also made a second one that is especially for me.

I have a lot of dreams. I always have had a lot of dreams, but I've always also been very, very good at procrastinating. This has been my mantra for the last year or so as I try to remind myself that those dreams won't amount to anything unless I put in the effort. I wanted to have something pretty to hang on the wall to keep it 'top of mind,' as they say.

This will hang in our laundry room - a room I see multiple times every day, as I'm sure you understand :) It will share wall space with mini quilts and mini mini quilts, some that I've made, others that I swapped for, and I will finally have my very own mini quilt wall. I'm planning to get everything hung this weekend, so I'll hopefully share that next week.

In the meantime, I'm looking forward to checking out all of your finishes for the week! Link up below and don't forget to visit a few of the other links and leave some comment love.

An InLinkz Link-up

Just the Basics Mystery Quilt - HSTs (Again, But Not as Many!)

Welcome back for month 4 of the Just the Basics Mystery Quilt!

I can't believe this is month 4 already! We'll start joining some units together this month, which always makes it feel like the quilt is really coming together. But first, here's a little reminder:

Introduction

 

Running from March to August 2016, the Just the Basics mystery quilt-a-long will require no special rulers and no scary techniques. The design is confident beginner level and there will be no paper piecing, no applique, no improv piecing and no y-seams! Not that there's anything wrong with any of those techniques, but sometimes it's fun to see what you can make out of basic blocks.

I promise, the basics are anything but boring!

It's never too late to join in. All of the posts can be found under the tab at the top of the blog, so you can start anytime. New posts will be published here on the first Wednesday of each month. You can follow Devoted Quilter by Bloglovin, email or Feedly to be sure you don't miss anything - the links are all on the sidebar. 

Remember, you can choose to make the Just the Basics mystery quilt in the 48" x 48" baby/wall size or the 60" x 72" throw size. Either way you'll cut and piece the units the same, but you'll make more of each unit for the throw quilt.

If you're on Instagram, don't forget to share your progress! Use #JustTheBasicsMysteryQuilt and tag me @devotedquilter.

In case you're just getting started, March was fabric selection, April was HSTs and May was Flying Geese and Square-in-a-square blocks. Now let's get going!

This Month's Instructions

We're making HSTs again this month, but not nearly as many as we made back in April. This will be the last time we make HSTs for this quilt, I promise! Then we'll join some of April's HSTs to this month's and your quilts will really start to take shape.

As a reminder, here are the fabrics I've chosen for my quilt.

HSTs

We'll be using fabrics 1 and 3 for our HSTs this month. In my fabrics, that means I'll be using the grey and the black. Once again, we'll be making these two at a time, chain piecing and making them larger than we need so we have room to trim them to the perfect size.

For the baby/wall size, you need 64 HSTs.
For the throw size, you need 120 HSTs.

Cut 

For baby/wall size

From fabric 1 - 32 squares 3" x 3"
From fabric 3 - 32 squares 3" x 3"


For throw size 

From fabric 1 - 60 squares 3" x 3"
From fabric 3 - 60 squares 3" x 3"

Rather than repeating the entire, in-depth tutorial I did back in April, I'm going to post a shortened version this month. If you want the in-depth version again, check out April's post.

Choose your lighter fabric and draw a diagonal line from corner to corner on the back of each square. Pair each fabric 1 square with a fabric 3 square, right sides together. Stitch 1/4" away from the line on both sides. Don't forget to chain piece all of the squares at once to make the whole process faster!

Cut apart on the drawn line. If you are using my method to trim, trim the blocks to 2 1/2" x 2 1/2" and then press them open. Otherwise, press the blocks open and trim using your preferred method.

Now you have a lovely new batch of HSTs to use for the next step!

 

Making Units 1A and 1B

You now have many (many, many) HSTs ready to be joined together. We'll be using the ones made this month and 64 (wall size) or 120 (throw size) from April.

Units 1A and 1B are almost identical, except for the orientation of the HSTs, so be careful as you join them together. For both units, press the seam towards your fabric 5, which in my case is the red fabric.

For the wall/baby size, you need 32 unit 1A and 32 unit 1B.
For the throw size, you need 60 unit 1A and 60 unit 1B.

Unit 1A looks like this:

 Unit 1B looks like this:

 Don't you just love the nice, sharp points you can get when you trim your HSTs? I certainly do!

That's it for this month. I've really been enjoying seeing your progress each month! Thanks to those who have left comments on the posts with links to blog posts and to those who have shared their progress on IG (#JustTheBasicsMysteryQuilt and tag me @devotedquilter). I'm looking forward to seeing your pictures again this month :)