10th Hour

A day late and a dollar short....
Yeah! That's about right!! LOL
Finally! Finally got  my Hands 2 Help Challenge Quilt top completed!!  I've struggled with this one!!

Diane sent me some beautiful bright fabrics along with a soothing gray.  (Her blog -- click here -- is just beautiful, too!) I added fabrics from my stash and this is the finished flimsey:

The quilt has to be in the mail no later than the end of this week, so I'll be putting it on the Hobby Quilter tomorrow to finish it up and get it mailed on time. 

My friend Pat from upstate New York :-), the Project Linus Coordinator in our area, volunteered to send a quilt for the children in Romania!! Pat's quilt, like mine, is bright colors -- and she used the cutest print for the backing!! I'm so thrilled to have an extra quilt to send with mine!!

Seems like for weeks now that I've spun my wheels and not gotten much done, but perhaps I've turned a corner by getting Jennifer's quilt top (last post) and this one complete.

I need to work on Farmer's Wife blocks this week, complete a block for a friend (due on Saturday), get my club's Mystery Quilt installment written...
Lots to do!

My church is reading the Gospel of John together during the next 21 days -- one chapter a day.  Today was the first day and first chapter.  It tickled me to read that a couple of John the Baptist's desciples followed Jesus about the "tenth hour." :-)  (Wonder if they were working on quilts for orphans?! :-D)

Even more impressive, though, is Andrew's response to Jesus:

The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (that is, the Christ). And he brought him to Jesus.  (John 1:41-42a)

It's never too late -- 10th hour or no! -- to know Jesus.  It's never to late to tell someone else and bring them to Him!!

Blessings,

Home Away From Home

I'm spending this week in LaFollette, TN at Galilee Bible Camp where the kids and I have served during the last several summers.  It's Middle School week and Will is a camper and I'm leading worship each evening at chapel.

The staff and volunteers here pour themselves into the campers week after week during the summer.  They are dear friends, and they have been a wonderful influence on our family.  We are blessed to be a part of the ministry here.

This week, I'm not as active as usual at camp.  It's a kind of retreat for me, as there are memories of Sam everywhere.  Emily and Will, too -- so it's sweet and sad to be here with Sam gone, Emily grown up, and Will so quickly growing, too.

One of the missionaries, Rebecca, gave me a couple of heart blocks for Sam's Darling Hearts quilt.  She is catching the quilting bug (YES!! :-D), and rightly so with Selma Jean and I helping her catch it!!

Selma Jean, a prolific wonderful quilter, also made a heart block. And she surprised me yesterday with beautiful handmade ornaments, each embroidered with my children's names.

On Sam's she included the dates of his birth and death.  It struck me that from now on, people will see Emily and Will and think I only have two children.  But I have three.  I'll always have three. :-)  So three ornaments!! Selma Jean understands!!!

I brought projects to work on while at camp.  It's a nice quiet time for me, and I have some deadlines approaching....the Hands-2-Help quilt for Romania, for one!  I've got the blocks laid out and ready to be put together. The deadline is the end of the month....so yeah! Onward!! LOL

I also have another project that is short on time (aren't they all! LOL)!  This one, I can't reveal just yet, but here is a hint....

 

I have the rest of that quilt in my head...and it's gotta get outa there and onto fabric in the next couple of weeks....Let's hope I can make that transition from vision to concrete reality! LOL

Between the heat and my working on projects, I'm ready for sleep tonight.  I'm resting on a beautiful pillowcase made by my friend, Lil.  She makes dozens of pillowcases to share with friends, family and people in need.  She knows my colors (red, green and gold!!), and I love that she included a label on the inside, too.

It's an oasis here, a home away from home.  Maybe because I take "home" with me! :-D  My sewing machine!  My pillow and my quilts.  My Pepsi! :-D (and a bit of zucchini bread).  My family. My friends.  My memories.

And the God of all Comfort and Peace:

Psalm 139:7-10

⁷Where could I go from Your Spirit? Or where could I flee from Your presence?
⁸If I ascend up into heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol (the place of the dead), behold, You are there.
⁹If I take the wings of the morning or dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
¹⁰Even there shall Your hand lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me.

There's no place like Home!

Blessings!

The Cheese Stands Alone

When we were at retreat last month, we had several discussions about the Farmer's Wife.  A new gal joined our group, Heidi, and she kept calling it Farmer's Daughter, and after a discussion about using bright neon colors, we decided it would have to be the Farmer's Mistress or Girlfriend! LOL

I'm making progress on those 111 blocks! (And it's taking way less time than a mistress would! LOL  And money, too, since I'm stash shopping for this one! :-D)

Adding these ten to my others, I'm nearly at the 2/3rds mark! Very cool! Most of the class is keeping up, too!!

For the class, I broke the Farmer's Wife down into "units" each month -- beginning with blocks with squares and rectangles, then half-square-triangles -- and we've been doing HST's since February!  June's blocks (above, I'm trying to stay a month ahead of the class!) are mostly "quick-piecing" type blocks, and July's will move us into quarter-square-triangles. 

We'll eventually get into flying geese, and square-in-a-squares, and diamonds, hopefully building skill levels as we go!

I've also managed to make some progress on the Hands-2-Help quilt for Romania!  Sarah Craig at Confessions of a Fabric Addict arranged a charity quilt exchange/challenge a couple of months ago...but I'm sure if you wanted to make a quilt for Romania, she (and Judi at Green Fairy Quilts) would happily accept them!!  Diane sent me this beautiful bright fabric for my quilt:

And I've added some more bright colors to Diane's fat quarters and made these so far for the pinwheel-y quilt top I designed in EQ:

All those different names we thought of for the Farmer's Wife make me think of the Farmer in the Dell! and the inevitable conclusion -- the cheese stands alone! Makes you feel sorry for the cheese, doesn't it? Everybody's got somebody in the old nursery-room song, except the cheese. 

Working together is so much more fun that working alone... whether it's charity quilts or ongoing projects or classes!!

One of the greatest blessings of the Christian life is the promise that we are never alone. Listen to the words of the prophet Isaiah:

When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
you will not be burned;
the flames will not set you ablaze.
For I am the LORD, your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior;
I give Egypt for your ransom...
Do not be afraid, for I am with you

(Isaiah 43:2-3a, 5a)

No cheese standing alone, here!

Blessings,

Things to Remember...

Is it my age?
I'm getting so forgetful!! A few really nice things happened to me this past week that I forgot about...!
I'm straightening up the living room, and what do I find?  Some beautiful mail!

Thelma at Cupcakes 'n Daisies sent this beautiful mug rug and lovely encouraging letter AND post-it notes!! How did she know I love, love, love post-it notes!?! :-D  I even have post-it note fabric in my All about Me quilt!! Very cool, Thelma! and thank you so much.  She sent the gift to me for finishing Eventide, a Miss Rosie pattern quilt-along she hosted.  It was such fun to do -- and she's giving me a gift!?! Awesome!

I also got my fabric from Diane in the Hands-2-Help Challenge over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict!  The quilts we make from this challenge will go to orphans in Romania.

I'm seeing pinwheels or something equally light-hearted and playful with this bright fabric! Fun, fun, fun!  

Joanne over at Thread Head is hosting two weeks of practicing your free-motion quilting! I've not officially joined (I'm so intimidated!), but I practiced and managed to passably quilt one of my UFO's for this month.  Pick Up Sticks is a Jo Morton quilt, and I used my walking foot to quilt in the ditch between the "sticks" then free-motioned the feathers on the border.  The back doesn't look as good as the front (I should have used a better matching thread to camouflage my mistakes!! LOL), but it's not too bad as one of my first efforts on my home sewing machine.



 Finally, I got this in the mail yesterday:

The Mary Mannakee Quilt block-of-the-month from Common Threads.  I have NO recollection of ordering this BOM! LOL None!! But I love it -- and it's red and green and so pretty!!!!  So, whether I remember it or not, I'm NOT sending it back!! LOL  It goes on the list. Or I may break over and start it...

If I don't forget!!

Psalm 103
 ¹ Praise the LORD, O my soul;
all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
² Praise the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits—
³ who forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases,
⁴ who redeems your life from the pit
and crowns you with love and compassion,
⁵ who satisfies your desires with good things
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

On this Easter Sunday, I dare not forget His benefits -- the most important being that He conquered death, hell and the grave!! -- and that He did this for you and me!!

Praise the Lord!
Blessings,



P.S.!!  I almost forgot -- the Traveling Stash!!! Random.org chose number 37 from the entries:  Jen W who said, "Would love to explore this box!!!  I've got MANY things to add to it also - just never want to GIVE away good sewing supplies...I always want them to go to a good home where they'll be used. Awesome idea!!!"  An email is winging it's way to Jen!! Thanks to everyone who commented!!