An Hour A Day

I wanted to be good at machine quilting by now, really good; Sundance has lived here for over a year. I studied designs in the books like I was preparing for a final exam, I photographed and pored over the stitches of others. I traced and copied flowing feathers on vinyl with wash away markers, I did everything except put in the required hour a day on the machine. Somehow I had deluded myself into thinking that if I thought it I could do it. Where did that thought process come from? It sure doesn't work that way. I took a deep breath. I loaded a quilt. I'm doing the time. We're getting there... stitch by stitch. It's not really good; no, not yet, but there is improvement. There's no bypassing the actual time spent, no shortcuts, no express route to success. This is something my head already knows, how many times had I spoken these words to my own children? Why did I think this would be any different? There's an acute awareness developing deep inside of what it takes to walk the road toward becoming proficient at something, it takes dogged dedication and an hour of working at it each and every day, wanting it just isn't enough!

Life is Good!
...and getting better...

"When patterns are broken
new worlds emerge."

~Tuli Kupferburg

Surprise Revealed!

The super-secret surprise that Quiltteacher and I worked on has officially been presented and can now be revealed, it's a stole for our Senior Pastor! It has twenty-three small picture panels based on Old Testament stories done by the elementary Sunday school children. Today he was honored on the occasion of his twenty year anniversary at our church, it was a celebration of great proportion! Our Bishop preached, there was a brass ensemble providing music along with our choir during the worship service, and we hosted over 350 members and guests for a box-lunch meal following the service in our Family Life Center. It was a day to be remembered and cherished. Back a few months ago our Youth and Family Ministries Director approached me with her idea for the stole. I wasn't sure, at all, how to even begin construction on one, that's where Quiltteacher came in. She has made a veritable stole wardrobe for her sister-in-law, also a Lutheran Pastor. She was happy to help. We snuck into Pastor's robing room one day and made a paper pattern off a stole we knew to be the proper length. From there it was simply a matter of creating a layout with the blocks that the children had done and making it all fit. The twenty third block is on the back of the collar, it was turned on point and trimmed; perfection! I added the piping between the blocks to separate them, it adds a nice line of definition and dimension. We chose the green color for the longest season of the church year, the Sundays after Pentecost, when we thought he'd most appreciate a change of "clothes". I don't know who was more excited about the gift, Pastor or the children. See below two details of the illustrated blocks and the child-artists clamoring for a close-up look at their own handiwork in it's new form when the surprise was revealed!



It was a glorious day of celebration, tomorrow it will be back to work for our hard working Pastor; but today was "his" day to enjoy the well wishes, the gifts and the congratulations for twenty amazing years of dedicated service to God's church and a congregation that deeply appreciates him!

Life is Good!