Lyn Briggs Designs

After finishing the thirty blocks needed for my Scrappy Christmas Quilt, I arranged them into six rows of five blocks but to be honest, when it comes to my scrappy quilts, I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about block placement simply because I’ve found it can be a trip down the road to insanity. Once you start moving blocks around, trying to avoid colour clashes, it becomes never-ending because you will always find something that doesn’t match.  To stay sane, I change a few blocks around, step back, and unless there is something glaringly obvious, I leave it at that and start pinning the blocks together before I get sucked into moving more blocks around.

Then after sewing them together, I turned my attention to the border.

Border…

The plan was always to add a pieced scrappy border with the smaller pieces of fabric left after making the blocks, because after all the whole aim of making the quilt was to use up as much of the Christmas fabric as possible.

To that end, I cut 3” wide strips of fabric from 4” – 6” in length and joined them together to fit each side of the quilt. For the corner blocks, I used 3” squares of fabric.

With the border in place, it was time to prepare the quilt for quilting.

Quilting …

I had originally planned to join pieces of Christmas fabric together to make a quilt backing. There are some larger pieces of fabric left but after some thought, I decided to keep them because I might need them for other Christmas projects throughout the year. But I still made a pieced backing with fabric pieces from my stash, just not Christmas fabric.

For the quilting, I plan to machine quilt in the ditch of the seams. 

Let the quilting begin.

Sure Foundation …

Summer has come to an end here in the Capital. As Autumn starts to unfold, there’s a freshness in the air on my morning walks and I’ve noticed that leaves are starting to change colour.

As much as I would prefer Summer to last much longer, like it or not, change is inevitable. In fact, it’s not only seasons that change, but everything in the world is subject to change. People come and go in our lives, we move house, change jobs, our physical bodies change, governments change…the list goes on. If we build our lives around changeable things we will be disappointed.  

I was reminded of that while reading the Bible this morning.

Psalm 102:25-27 says: “In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish but you remain. Like clothing you will change them and they will be discarded. But you remain the same, and your years will never end.”

God is always the same, He is not subject to change, and neither is His Word. We can depend on Him and always trust that He will do what He says He will do. His Word is eternal (Heb 40:8), and it is impossible for Him to lie (Heb 6:18).

Jesus said (Matt 7:24-25) that building our life on His Word is like building your house on the rock that will not fall during floods and storms.

In the same way, we don’t have to be unsettled by changes in our lives. When we put our trust in God and His unchanging Word, we can stand firm knowing that He will never leave us and has a better future for us.

Music to bless …

I’ve been revisiting some of my favourite worship songs, and this one, Sure Thing by Hillsong Worship, talks about building on the solid rock of Christ. “All other ground is sinking sand”

Until next time

Lyn