HST Making

I've been working with gorgeous batiks from RJR Fabrics and I absolutely love the colours! Here they are all washed and dried, ready to be used. My favourites are the deepest purple and the deepest blue. Oh, and the lightest purple...they're all so pretty it's hard to choose 😊

The batiks are destined to be a baby quilt for Paul's nephew's new baby, who arrived on Sunday morning, almost 6 weeks early. I had everything all scheduled out so I could have the quilt made well ahead of her due date, but her early arrival means her quilt will now be late, lol. All is well with baby Riley, though, so I'm not too concerned about a late quilt.

Over the past couple of days, I have cut the batiks and paired them with a solid that seems to be somewhere between grey and green. Sometimes it looks like one, other times the other. I thought I was ordering a light grey, but thankfully this greenish grey works too. That's the trouble with ordering through a computer screen, I guess. Have you ever had that problem when ordering fabrics online?

Chain piecing is so pretty!

I trim my HSTs before pressing them open. I line up the seam on the 45° line on my cutting mat and then trim on the lines that match the unfinished size I want the HST to be. I should have taken a picture, but I didn't think of that.

All trimmed and ready to go 😊 If you're thinking two of these things don't look like the others, that's because I'm making leader/ender HSTs as I piece the baby quilt.

That's what I'm up to these days 😊 What are you working on? And what beautiful colours are you using?

Ask for It!

Devotion for the Week...

A group of us moms were talking a little while ago, telling stories about our kids, and somehow we got to talking about what they've asked for for Christmas over the years.

I told the story about the year the only thing Zachary told Santa he wanted was a purple balloon. Not sure why, but that was all he wanted 😊 And what did we completely forget about until after the stores were all closed on Christmas Eve? Yep. I frantically called my friends, hoping someone had a stash of balloons left over from a birthday party or something! Michelle said she had a balloon she thought was purple, but it was hard to tell for sure without actually blowing it up. I picked it up and into Zach's stocking it went. Whew, crisis averted. Of course, when morning came and we blew up the balloon, it was blue. Ooops! He was a little disappointed, but all the other goodies under the tree seemed to make up for it.

Deanne told the story about her daughter Rebecca, who decided one year that what she told Santa she wanted was a secret. She wouldn't tell her parents! Deanne finally managed to convince Rebecca to tell her, if she promised not to tell Daddy.

When it comes to gifts, asking for what we want can be helpful. When it comes to prayer, asking for what we want is crucial.  Jesus said, "So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened" (Luke 11:9, 10).

Ask. Seek. Knock.

Those are all active words. Not 'sitting around, waiting for things to fall into your lap' words.

God wants us to tell Him what we want. Yes, He knows it all already: "Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely" (Psaml 139:4). For some reason, though, God wants us to come to Him and tell Him what we want. Maybe it's just a means of opening communication between us. Maybe it's to help us evaluate the things we want. Maybe it's to help us remember that everything we have comes from Him.

Whatever the reason, God tells us to ask. James even goes so far as to write, "You do not have because you do not ask God" (James 4:2). It makes me wonder how much God wants to do in us, through us and for us, but He doesn't because we never ask for it.

Of course, asking for what we want doesn't guarantee we're going to get everything we ask for. James goes on to say, "When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures" (v. 3). Not everything we ask for is good for us, or part of what God wants for us. And we're not always asking with the right motives, as James points out.

Yet, we are told to ask anyway. To come to God and tell Him what we want. Big things and little things, for us and for others; it doesn't matter. Whatever we want, He wants us to ask for it.

Medallion Magic in Modern Patchwork

My Medallion Magic quilt is in the November/December issue of Modern Patchwork! All of the fabrics for this quilt were generously provided by Northcott Fabrics. They are all solids except for the gorgeous brown background fabric, which is from the Naturescapes line.

I have always loved the idea of medallion quilts, but I find most of them to be a little too busy, with no space between the rounds to allow each one to really shine. In Medallion Magic each round of blocks is followed by a solid round to separate the blocks and give the design a bit of breathing space.

I also wanted the medallion design to be rectangular rather than square since I know that some quilters prefer rectangular quilts (Jasmine, I was thinking of you with this one 😊). I added one row of these quick and simple box blocks to the top and bottom to create the rectangle. The quilt finishes at 62" x 70".

I had so much fun with the quilting! Each of the elements in the blocks got some custom quilting and then I filled the background with the swirl hook design.

 

As usual, I matched my quilting threads to the colours on the front. I used Aurifil 1130, 4140 and 1231. With a solid green for the backing, the quilting stands out beautifully on the back 😊

 

This is another of my designs from the 30 Quilt Design IG challenge with Rachel at Stitched in Color. I have another one almost finished and two more waiting somewhat impatiently in the queue. Why, oh why aren't there more hours in the day?

Do you like medallion quilts? What elements do you look for when you're considering a medallion or sampler quilt?