Fifty-Fifty in Make Modern

I have been anxiously waiting for the time to share this quilt because I really love this one! Fifty-Fifty is in issue 42 of Make Modern magazine, which is available today 😊 Get your copy by clicking here. Make Modern is a digital magazine, so you could be reading it within minutes (but stay and finish reading about Fifty-Fifty first!).

Edited to say Fifty-Fifty is now available in my pattern shop, with baby, throw, and queen size instructions included!

Fifty-Fifty takes the traditional idea of a two block quilt and makes it modern by slicing the blocks in half. Planning the colours for the quilt was fun, especially when I hit on the idea of using warm orange and yellow for the log cabin blocks and two shades of cool teal for the bursts, further enhancing the split feel of the quilt.

All of the fabrics for Fifty-Fifty are Century Solids, from Andover Fabrics. This was my first time using the Century Solids and I love how soft they are and the richness of the colours. I also found they hardly frayed at all, unlike some other brands (Kona, I'm looking at you).

As usual, I spent the piecing time trying to figure out how to quilt it, but was still undecided even when I sat with the quilt under the needle, ready to start. After staring at it for a while longer, I started by echoing the triangle of the dark teal in the burst blocks a few times, using Aurifil 4182. Then, because I couldn't decide how to quilt the light teal, I moved on to the orange part of the log cabin blocks. I quilted those with simple back and forth lines in Aurifil 1133. Partway through doing that I realized that by quilting the dark teal and the orange, I had quilted half of the elements in the blocks, which amused me considering the name of the quilt, so I decided to go with that theme. I then quilted the grey background of the burst blocks with Aurifil 2600, but left the black borders of the log cabin blocks unquilted, so the whole quilt is roughly half quilted 😊

I love the texture of it and how the different colours show up on the solid grey backing!

I had the quilt finished before Paul and I went away back in July, so I took it with me, thinking I would get lots of opportunities for pictures. That wasn't really the case, what with all the hiking we did and the windy days. I did take this one, though, draped over the railing in the AirBnB we stayed in.

The chair on that landing would be my favourite reading and hand stitching spot, if we owned the house. It was in a little narrow nook outside the master bedroom and directly across from the huge windows looking out over the ocean. With a cup of tea in hand, it would be perfect for watching boats and keeping an eye out for whales. Not sure how much I'd ever get done with all that ocean wathcing, though, so it's probably a good thing we don't live there!

When we got home from our trip, we took the quilt to my usual quilt photography beach and got the pictures for Make Modern and this post. I love days when I need quilt pictures, so I have an excuse to go to the beach. Not that I need an excuse, mind you! Quilts always look good with the ocean in the background, don't they?

Don't forget to get your copy of the Fifty-Fifty pattern so you can see how much of it you decide to quilt!

One last picture, of Fifty-Fifty blowing in the wind 😊

I'm linking with TGIFF, Can I Get a Whoop Whoop, NTT, and Beauties Pageant.

A Drop in the Bucket

 Devotion for the Week...

I'm ba-aack! This is my first new devotion after my summer break. I really hope you enjoyed reading the reposted series about the fruit of the Spirit over the summer as much as I enjoyed re-reading each one. Now I am ready to dive back into some new writing, so let's get to it 😊

Last Monday Paul and I went out blueberry picking, which I absolutely love. I love being out in the woods, searching for the good patches of berries, tasting a few (you know, to make sure they're okay!) and filling up my buckets with berries to enjoy through the winter. I love the hollow kind of sound the first few berries make as they hit the bottom of the plastic bucket and I love when the bottom of the bucket is covered and you don't hear the sound anymore.

The buckets we take out hold about a gallon each. Compared to the bucket, one wild blueberry doesn't seem like much (they're considerably smaller than the cultivated berries you'll find in stores). It takes an hour or more of steady picking to fill the bucket and there are thousands of berries in there by the time it's full. When you start, it feels like it will take forever to fill the bucket. After a while, you notice the bottom is filled, then gradually the berries rise up higher and higher. Eventually, it gets to the point you're thinking you soon have to stop because the bucket is nearly full. And then, a few berries later, it actually is full. Whoo hoo!!

As I picked, I kept thinking about the verse in Galatians where Paul wrote, "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up" (Galatians 6:9). This verse is about doing the good and right thing, which can be tough at times, especially when we don't see any reward or result from our work. Doing the right thing can be exhausting! Whether it's being kind in the face of rudeness, or caring for someone difficult, or giving when everyone else seems to be hoarding (whether time, money or talents, it doesn't matter), sometimes it just gets old and we're tempted to give up.

But Paul tells us to not grow weary, because there will be a harvest 'at the proper time' if we don't give up. We don't know when that time will be. We can't know how many times we'll do a good thing before the proper time comes. We probably don't even know what the 'harvest' will be. That smile you're pasting on your face and the patience you're dredging up from the depths for that always-difficult person may feel like a drop in the bucket, but there may come a day when that particular bucket is full and that person asks how you're able to always be so kind. Or maybe that person will never change, but someone else, someone who has been observing you all this time without you realizing, will be the one to ask.

What makes this so hard is we can't see the bucket we're filling. We don't know if it's the size of a cereal bowl or a garbage can, and we can't see the progress we're making. Only God knows when the proper time will come for the harvest and only He knows what that harvest will be. We have just one job, which is to keep dropping the berries into the bucket (aka keep doing good). If we keep doing that and don't give up, we can trust that there will be a harvest that will be much sweeter than a freezer full of blueberries.

Picking blueberries seems to be particularly inspiring. This is now my third blueberry-inspired devotion. You can read the other two here and here.

Fruit of the Spirit - Part 11

While I'm taking my annual summer break from writing new devotions, I'm sharing this series on the fruit of the Spirit, which was originally published in 2016.

Devotion for the Week...

It's time for the final installment of our fruit of the Spirit devotion series! If you missed the previous devotions, click to read the introduction, about love, about joy, about peace, about patience, about kindness, about goodness, about faithfulness, about gentleness and about self-control.

Once again, here is our verse for this series: "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" (Galatians 5:22,23).

A few years ago Aiden was fascinated by stupid laws and his favourite by far was from Alberta. The law stated that when a prisoner was released from prison, he had to be given a gun, bullets and a horse!! Presumably this was to help said prisoner get out of town and therefore out of the hair of the local authorities, but doesn't it sound rather self-defeating for the authorities to arm someone they already know is a criminal?
  
Though some laws may be questionable, civilizations generally make laws with the intention to protect their citizens and maintain public order. Laws are written to declare which actions are so unacceptable that they will be punished by the authorities. From the major crimes (murder) to the minor ones (littering) societies outlaw all the things that they consider to be wrong. That's pretty basic, right?

And then there are God's laws. God gave His law to Moses to teach the Isrealites how to live properly, how to avoid sin and to serve Him with their whole hearts. God's law is meant to keep people safe from sin.

I find it interesting that the Bible tells us that there are no laws against any of the fruit of the Spirit. There is no law against the kind of all-encompassing love the Spirit can cause us to show. There is no law against patience in the face of trouble or against self-control when tempted to do wrong. There are no laws against these things because goodness is no threat to public order. Joy is no threat to a city's safety, and patience, well, that could do wonders if displayed a little more often.

 I think Paul pointed out that there are no laws against these things as a point of comparison. In Galatians 5, in the paragraph before we see the fruit of the Spirit, Paul writes a list of "the acts of the flesh" (v. 19), which are "sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like" (vv. 19-21), many of which are against the law. Though they may not all be against society's laws, they are all outside of God's will for us and therefore against His law. All of these actions stem from a person's desire to live entirely for themselves, without regard for God or other people.

In contrast to those self-serving actions, there are no laws against displaying the fruit of the Spirit. In fact, it is just the opposite. There is reason to encourage people to grow in their ability to show every one of these traits. Can you imagine the shift that would take place in our world if everyone lived with the fruit of the Spirit as their standard? If people actually lived out love, joy, peace and the others? All of them at once, not just specializing in one or two, but growing in all 9 (which are actually 9 sides of one fruit, remember). Wouldn't that be amazing?

Our world desperately needs more of the fruit of the Spirit. The first step towards that goal would be for each of us to become more aware of the Spirit in our own lives and to seek to listen better to the warnings and reminders He gives us. 

Maybe, though, there is another step we could be taking. Maybe we should also be seeking opportunities to encourage others when they display the traits we've been studying. After all, the more the fruit of the Spirit grows in the world, the better the world will be.