Songs of Faith #12: Blessed Assurance

 and pray without ceasing...

Songs of Faith #11

 This block was to be, "I Need Thee Every Hour".  I changed it to "Nearer My Gd To Thee", Mauricio's favorite hymn.  

This hymn tells the story of Jacob's dream from Genesis 28:11-12.  In his dream a ladder was set up on the earth, and its top reached to heaven; and there the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.

This hymn is the alleged last song the band on the Titanic played before the ship sank.

Snowball top pieced

 Only 2 days of sewing with mom to complete this quilt top. Quilting will have to wait until I finish the VanGogh quilt.  I'm off to my son's in the morning and taking my machine and VanGogh with to work on.  I'm also taking supplies to sew more face masks and a ton of hand sewing along.  Will I really get that much done while he is in class, or will I end up doing more hiking than sewing?  It doesn't matter, I'm just happy to be going on a road trip. 

Using old beads

 Remember when we were all beading like crazy, making necklaces, bracelets and earrings? Those old projects were cluttering my rather small jewelry box and I decided to take them apart for my current Bible study quilt.  It appears that turquoise/aqua/sea glass... have been my favorite colours for a long time! I'm also happy to recycle and not make another purchase, for now.

Apple time

 Some years I have so many apples that I don't know what to do with them.  This year is not one of those.  Most of the apples are rather small and 3 trees don't have but a handful of apples.  The golden delicious tree is not exactly covered, but enough to do a few batches of dehydrating.

Songs of Faith: Layout play

 I've been putting off figuring out a layout design for my "songs" quilt until at least half of the blocks were completed.  It's now time to start playing with my ideas.  After looking at some church windows, I decided that a stained glass triptych may work. Not having all the blocks complete makes it a little hard to design. I used cut up magazine pages for the blocks that are current works in progress and batting for the ones yet to stitch. The batting can always be cut to a different size if needed.

A little further playing ...  In order to fit all the blocks, I decided that some circles at the top would help break it up and create more of an old window look.  Each circle will be a different song.  The panels on the two edges will be for the smaller blocks I created for each song.  

This is from Notre Dame in Paris, taken in 2015.  Dee, Mom, and I met up with Jes for a lovely time in Amsterdam and Paris.  Travel is such a wonderful way to be inspired!

Songs of Faith Block #10

 Rock of Ages... Adding a rock seemed like the right thing to do!

Van Gogh - Pieced. Ready to sandwich and quilt...

 I did it. The top is all sewn! 

Van Gogh Quilt - Will I ever finish?

 More problem solving on this silly quilt.  I was finally to the point of stitching the top to the bottom halves together.  On no! They were not the same width! So there goes my goal of having it done and starting something else.

A call to Beth to discuss options.  Her suggestion was to add a piece of blue to the side and do some embroidery work on it.  Lucky me - I remembered that I had saved a long blue linen skirt that would be ever so nice to stitch on:

And even luckier - it is long enough to not have to piece it to make it work.  Now to find a Van Gogh quote that will fit and appear that it was planned all along...

Songs of Faith: Go Tell It On The Mountain

 Originally, Go Tell It On The Mountain, was an African-American spiritual song and was compiled by John Wesley Work, Jr. in 1865. 

New quilt beginnings: Snowball

 Now that the living room has a new coat of paint, new curtain, new carpeting, and hopefully before too long - new tile around the wood burner, it is time for a colour coordinated quilt for the sofa.  Not really necessary, but a good excuse to start a new quilt.  Like I need an excuse!

I have a sewing day planned with mom for later in the month and decided that for us to finish a quilt top in a day that it needs to be a super simple pattern.  While looking thru my Pinterest quilt board I came across this easy quilt called, Snowball.

As I have always loved graph paper play, it seemed like a good idea to play:

I thought a 4 inch block would be good and set out to quickly sew a sample block, randomly picking fabric from my scrap box. (The finished quilt will actually be in blues and greys.)

It was also the same day I went to the nursery up in Morrison and picked out a new hibiscus for my garden.  Funny how all of a sudden the snowball block looked more like a hibiscus!

A little stitching and beading later...  No longer a snowball!