Through the Eyes of a Quilter

Do you ever feel like a new baby turtle, trying to find its way? I have. Those little turtles are totally dependent on their instinct. Good thing I've had a lot of guidance in my life! But there are still times, even now, that I feel like that turtle who is turned around and even headed the wrong way. This past year has been a tough one for me. Lots of challenges to overcome. I'm still struggling with a few. But also a lot of blessings. Sometimes those challenges in life can cause you to head in a direction unintended. A direction you would not choose, but because of things beyond your control, you find yourself feeling, acting, or doing things that are not like you at all. At that point you have to heed the call of those who love you and switch directions. It's not easy, but is possible. It will take hard work, and probably a forgiving heart, not just for someone else, but for yourself also. And lots of understanding. It will not happen over night, it might take months,...

There are those people we meet that are always happy, that always see the cup half full instead of half empty. I call them Sunshine Friends. They always make you feel better. The world we live in can be wonderful, and it also can be hard. Trials can break us down if we let them. But we are stronger than our hardest and most trying trial. If we put our trust in the Lord, and seek His help, we can make it through because we have been promised 'I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me' Philippians 4:13. The key here is with His help. Not on our own, but with the power from above, that can get us through anything thrown our way. I love black and white quilts. When I started putting this one together, thoughts started running through my mind. I had the middle finished but I knew it needed a little something. Something more than just a border. It needed a pop of color. The black and white reminded me of the world in which we live in today. The black, the sad...

As I worked on one of the last quilts I did, I noticed the black background gathered a ton of lint on it, and after cleaning it off, there it appeared again. Life is like that. Sometimes we must revisit an issue we have tried to move past more than once. There are lots of challenges in life. Each challenge we experience is for our own good, even if we don't understand why. Some things are because of things we do, some things from actions of others. And still some from life itself, no ones fault, just the way it is. The challenge we must focus on is how we handle life's challenges. A lot of time forgiveness is needed to truly move on. Forgiveness is essential for our eternal growth. And just like the lint that continued to get on my quilt, things continue to happen to us through out our lives. Here is that pesky lint that I found on my quilt along with my lint roller, all clean. Here is the quilt after I cleared the lint, but it still had a few pieces I had to work a l...

This summer has been a hard one. In fact, the last year, starting with Hurricane Florence last year, has been the hardest year for me. It just seems that one thing after another kept happening. Not big things, mostly little things, but like that pebble that gets in your shoe and hurts so much, that's been my last year. But not all has gone wrong. Because I have seen the Lords hand working in my life. I have been able to spend a lot of time with my grandma and with my parents. Also I have had plenty of opportunities to spend with my 2 granddaughters, along with my 5 kids and son-in-law and my wonderful husband. Plus spending time with other family members, I have been blessed.  Even with all that I have been blessed with I have still felt the weight of different challenges from the past year. I have found when I feel weighed down I can feel peace in my sewing room. It's not a huge room, but it's mine. When I sit down at my sewing machine, I can see things clearly. I ...

While cleaning my sewing room, trying to organize it, yet again, I found a ton of little squares already sewed together, waiting so patiently to b ecome a quilt. These were small squares, sewn together with small strips. By themselves, not worth much use to anyone at all.  So I took part of that pile of squares and made this scrappy quilt. It amazes me how I can take a little of this and a little of that, put it together and make something so useful. to the untrained eye, all those little blocks were just that, scraps. Little value until they were combined together added with more small strips and squares, to make a uniform quilt.  Isn’t that how life is? Every little thing we put into our life shapes it and helps us become who we are. Honoring our parents, taking care of grandparents, helping nieces and nephews, serving others, reading our scriptures, praying, going to church. And by stitching the squares together they become bigger and bigger till they can to ser...

At church I work with the Primary kids, ages 3-11, with singing time. I ABSOLUTELY love doing this! I wanted to have the kids help me design a quilt to give away. The theme was I Am A Child of God, and we have a song by this name also. So they designed a maze quilt. I had my daughter help me with path from start to finish and they added all the other 'pathways' on it. We talked about how much this relates to life. Here we see that sometimes we get stuck doing the same thing over and over again. We go around in a loop and just can't seem to get out. We also may find we need to backtrack from where we are to go the right way instead of hitting a dead end. We may have small areas to back track as in above, or sometimes larger areas we need to backtrack from. We can do this through repentance. Its not always an easy process. It may be to start a new habit that can help us, or to stop doing something that is keeping us from reaching our goals. But it is ALWAYS worth the ...

Life is busy. We are constantly trying to fit that last thing in that we feel we MUST do. We rearrange the way we do things, cut back on some things, pick up other habits. But what are we really changing in our life? Is it for the good, or just what we feel will make life easier? Do we stop doing the important little things so we can fit in the big things we feel are so important? When quilting it is very important to watch how you cut and sew. I was putting a block together that had a lot of little pieces. after sewing a row together, I tried to fit it to another row. It just wouldn't fit. When I figured out what was wrong, a piece was cut just a tad to small. Just that little bit off of the one block can make a world of difference. Life is the same way. We go through life making choices of how to best fit in everything we need to do.  When things are hectic, we sometimes cut corners. At first we don't see the affect it has on us, and maybe those around us. But in time, things...