What happens when after baking a rhubarb cake, you test it and find it kind of ‘meh’? You scour your pantry for ideas et voila, you find a jar of ‘magic’ to use as a topping! Thank you, April! You may live 4 hours away, but you came to my rescue once again!
The writing continues. The music and most elements having to do with the hard scape is set, but the text…I’ve written so many verses, I’ll have to cull some for continuity, or what I call, good story telling.
Helping me keep the faith on this journey of a lifetime, is a full-time job for God. I have a tendency of running ahead of God on any journey. If you had or have a child with the affinity of wandering off, you know what I mean. But for this 61 year old, the song-writing process isn’t any different. I start out with every good intention of following Him, but for whatever reason, still run ahead, until what’s ahead is unfamiliar and a little scary looking for me.
Maybe this was the inspiration for my most recent song, “My Deliverer.” I can never anticipate where the inspiration will come from, but looking back, the sources have echoed moments in my prayer life, milestones, both pleasant and difficult, and celebrations. Melodies usually come first, then choruses, then verses out of a nebula of ideas/themes/catch phrases. This particular project stands on a phrase, “Things aren’t always what they may appear.”. When I’m ‘called’ to work on a project, it turns into a battle for my attention, as the process can overwhelm me. I lean on Him heavily to keep a balance in my life between my creative thoughts and the more mundane activities that press upon each of our lives. I mean, there’s only so long you can ignore the laundry before you have an underwear crisis brewing. Really.
Despite my plethora of song verses I’ll have to review, I am learning to wait on Him. And when I do, what unusual paths He leads me on, only because more often than not, how I perceive the finished work, always pales in comparison to the completion of what He has endeavored me to do. It’s so satisfying when a project is finished…I just need to remember what’s waiting for me while the process is still in process.
I do not write because it’s my vocation. I do not have a degree in creative writing. Call it my cross to bear, or a calling – probably 100% both if there could be such a thing. I do not feel gifted and work hard to craft anything I write. I’m not a great conceptual thinker – you only need read any of my blogs for confirmation of that truth.
The only interest that I have in it is that it is a God-thing. I feel compelled and can not rest until what He has given me to do is done. God is like that, too. I like to say that God is always up to something. He will not stop until what He has begun is finished. But He has a peace-filled way of completing His works. I’d like to think that is one (of many) qualities He is working to produce in me.
Even my nights are God’s to speak into my heart. He operates from His place of perfect peace, but for me the urgency that necessitates keeping a well-stocked stack of scrap paper and a pencil, where others might keep their cellphone, on my bedside table, facilitates making it possible for me to capture thoughts that come to mind before they disappear into my brain fog of early morning.
I could say here that having scrap paper at hand for night time ‘scribbles’ is an act of obedience or some other such lofty motive, but for me, that’s too sterile. My life is a mess and He knows it. Confronting those messes can be messy. (Deep, right?) And we can make our lives even messier when we toddle off on our own pathways. It can get pretty scary-dark when we lose sight of His light.
Still, He’s there always within ear shot – waiting for our cry. And like a child who has been separated from a mama or papa by wandering off, finding the familiar gone and only unfamiliar and scary surroundings to be seen, I knew I was that child who, once again, had run ahead.
I could not see Him, but He could see me and with the kind of mercy and grace that led me to add the words, “What have I to fear?” to the song text, He came and invited me to follow Him to stand as one would stand in a dappled rain-dropped woodland glen. And as the light streamed through the tree canopy, we listened. And I heard the faint echo of what my heart had prayed that same morning… “Lord, help me to say what is real. Help me to be courageous enough to reach into those well guarded areas of my life that only You and I know about.” And there it was. In that moment, in that beautiful, holy place, I saw through His eyes how someday it will be. It’s messy now, but, “I’m certain I’ll be delivered…’cause my Deliverer is here.”.
This is our newest quilt and it’s DONE!!! YAY!!! And now for the story of its creation….
Note the date of the Facebook post…YIKES! The year was 2016….and the year the magazine from which the single photo page (no pattern) was torn, was printed in the 1980s. “The End of The Trail” was this antique quilt’s name, which throughout the process of making my king-sized quilt, kept me amused at every juncture when finishing my quilt seemed like it would never come.
The fabric in the above Facebook post was to be the color wave…I still love it, but none of that fabric ever made it into the quilt. Finally after a disappointing false start with other fabrics that weren’t playing nicely together, I did get started. Using remnants of the ‘family stash’ going back to the 1950s, I used my beloved Singer Featherweight that my dear mother had gifted me in the mid-1970s to do all the piecing…
Piecing the blocks was relatively easy, but finding a place where I could audition the layout was a challenge…our bedroom floor was the only place large enough. My husband, with his long basketball-playing legs, stepped over it a lot on our way to our office. What a good sport he is!
I was bound and determined that I was NOT going to the store to buy fabric for the back of the quilt. Piecing the back with fabric from my abundant stash would be the answer. I had some left-over blocks that I hadn’t used on the front of the quilt, so I made a strip of several of them, then auditioned long enough fabrics to frame the block-strip. As it was, though some of the fabrics were long enough, other fabrics were not, but to my eye, worked and I carefully pieced them and added them to the mix.
I used MOST of this roll of wool batting that I had ordered a year before. It, too, had to be pieced, which I did successfully on my more modern Brother sewing machine using a zig-zag stitch.
Then came the day when I had to baste the top and bottom of the quilt together. My sewing room, being as small as it is, made it necessary to move a collapsible utility table into our large bedroom. I pinned it with safety pins in strategic places to help keep it from shifting and beginning from the center, with red thread and a large needle, I began making the large stitches that would hold all the layers together for the quilting. As I write this blog, I recall my much younger days when Mom would send me to her sewing room for a needle to make some sort of repair. Biggest is best, right? That’s what I thought. So, of course, I would grab the biggest needle. Proud of my choice, Mom would laugh that I brought her, her words, “a ‘crowbar'”. I began basting the three layers together with what would be perfectly described as a crowbar. It did the job, too!
Once the quilt was relatively stable, I moved it downstairs and began quilting it. I wanted the quilt to have a more modern look, so opted for straight lines using mostly variegated quilt threads which I ordered online. I was happy with the Sulky 12 weight threads in beautiful colors of greens and blues, as well as solid colors of pearl cottons in blue, green, black, and white.
Nearly 6 rolls of blue painter’s tape helped me cross the wide expanse of the quilt. The width of the tape determined how far apart my quilting would be. It was so satisfying to rip off the tape after each traverse, wad it up into a ball, and then attempt to ‘make a basket’ into the wastebasket adjacent to my husband’s chair. I missed a lot, but he was happy to make the ‘assist’.
There were many days the quilt sat near the fire, instead of on my knees…it was our silent conversationalist many nights…
As more and more of the quilt was quilted, I removed the red basting thread. It was easy and made every small ‘inch by inch’ accomplishment even more rewarding.
As I got to the border, I pulled out some heavier threads that I had in my stash to use in quilting; one I particularly loved and a couple that, shall I say, were supporting actors, and randomly quilted with these three colors. On the last side of the border, the favorite was running dangerously low, but with only 5 inches of the thread, I was able to finish! If I hadn’t been quilting randomly, I might have been able to estimate how much I needed, but God supplied enough, through to the last stitch.
After the hand-quilting was finished on the border, I decided to push myself by adding some machine-quilting to the hand-quilting God had made possible to complete. Again, I used my Brother machine, which has a needle-down feature, making the process of rotating the quilt (especially of this size) a less wobbly affair. It’s not because I’m not great at machine quilting that I don’t have a photo of this process, I just forgot, but I was happy with the results. Again I used a beautiful variegated grey/white thread made by Sulky.
Not all the machine-quilting was pleasing to my eye, which meant the seam ripper had to come out. It slowed me down a little, but glad that I removed the stitching before I proceeded with any more machine-quilting.
After all the ‘corrections‘ were made and the hand-quilting on the border was finished, I needed to make the binding. After taking stock of what fabric I had left after using the majority of it for the border, I was concerned that I wouldn’t have enough of the fabric, but took an ‘estimated’ chance. I cut the fabric in widths of 2.25 inches, but had to piece the strips several times as some pieces were only 6 inches in length! The binding pressed in half and ready to go, we set up the collapsible table one last time in our bedroom, and I, again with my beloved Featherweight, for old time’s sake began machine-stitching the binding to the quilt. It was a blessed time as I looked out over the lake, knowing, at one time, whenever Mom sewed in the little upstairs bedroom at her house in Saranac Lake, she had a lake view, too. I was blessed, too as I joined the two ends of the binding together with only 12 inches to spare. I cut it close, but again, God provided.
After the binding was attached to the quilt, I began the process of turning the folded edge of the binding to the back side of the quilt. I LOVE this last step, but, to document the quilt, I was in a quandary as to the ‘name’ of the quilt. The label took me many tries as the photo below attests to…
But, I finally finished it. I used some fabric markers and outlined some of the lines with thread and with a blanket or buttonhole stitch hand-sewed it into one corner of the quilt.
I now could finish the hand-stitching on the binding. Here is my last stitch securing the binding to the quilt…OH, HAPPY DAY!!!
And here is the finished project…
The pieced back…
And, yes, on our bed…
And do you remember the name of the inspiration quilt, pulled from a magazine in the 1980s? “The End of The Trail”, now my ‘Chosen Spot to Dream’ in the restful shades of blues, grays, and greens, is known to me as, “Canandaigua Colors“.
Look what just arrived at my house! WOOHOO!!! Build a few somethin’-somethins’ on my sewing machine for a new/old Arizona friend, and the rewards, which have been thus far already plentiful, just keep on coming!
in all forms. A sesame bagel was always my fave, and tahini spread on almost anything would be tough for me to resist! These ‘paleo’ cookies may make it to afternoon coffee, but I won’t guarantee it….I’m amazed the dough got from the mixing bowl to the oven!
Finished up four little Christmas tree ornaments (or maybe, love boats?) for four special kiddos who still call me ’LA-LA’!
My grandmother’s Christmas cactus is pictured at the center of this Christmas tree skirt, which is now ready to be quilted and bound. I began working on it a few weeks ago using my beloved ‘memory stash’, consisting of cotton remnants from generations of garment sewing projects, which has been the inspiration of many of my scrappy play days since my mother’s death in May. The plan is for me to finish it in time for it to surround my Christmas tree in December. Once it is, each year my loved ones, some passed from this life into eternity, will gather again around my Christmas tree, if only in my remembrances….
Musings, Moments, Memories, and More 