All Saint's Eve

Tomorrow is the day our culture forgets to celebrate.
November First, All Saints Day.
The day of the hallowed and holy.



Would it be asking too much to forgo the celebration of evil and terror this year? Would it be impossible for our country, our neighborhood, our church, to not join in the pagan revelry of All Hallow's Eve? I am disappointed and shocked to hear members of my church referring to Halloween as their "favorite time of year." Not the autumn with it's leaves and bonfires, pumpkins and cider....

specifically Halloween:
With it's devils and demons, ghosts and witches.
With it's evil and sorcery and desperate bleakness of the soul.

specifically Halloween:
The night given over to darkness.
The frantic time of fears, greedy begging, and mean pranks.

specifically Halloween:
The Black Sabbath.
The opposite -- OPPOSITE !-- of everything a Christian should celebrate and rejoice in.

As Christians , if we want to take our children door to door in our neighborhood, any night of the year, shouldn't it be as witnesses to the glorious message of Christ and Salvation?I think it should. Why, then, do we offer them to the world as examples of a pagan faith instead?

Building Blocks: Snowball Bonus Block

Here's my easy method of making Snowball blocks and Half Square Triangles at the same time.
I begin with one large square (this one was 9 1/2 inch) and four small squares (these were 4 inch). The four small squares are marked with a diagonal line from tip to tip as you can see in this picture:

Of course, you only sew them on one at at time. So take one small square and match its unmarked corner to the corner of the large square. You may want to pin it in place; I don't but I'm a bit careless about things like that.

The diagonal line (which now runs across the corner of the large square) is your seam guide. Run you quarter inch foot along the line, so that your seam is a quarter inch from that line. Do that on BOTH sides of the line.

Once you have done this on all four corners (and used all four squares) you will cut along the marked lines.

Press the large square open and it's the snowball block (it will need to be trimmed a bit) and press cut off corners open for four HSTs.

It's *Snowing* Again

Texture for Tuesday

Blue Spruce Branches

Blue and Green and Gold

That fabric across the top has a great colour combo, with sage/olive green stems and mustard gold flowers framed in creamy tan, against a rich blue ground. As you can see, I've pulled out several greens and a gold to match, and added a blue and green "eyeball" stripe, a blue and gold on tan print and a fun blue and green on tan print that reminds me of peapods (on the far right).
These will blend together in a simple scrappy squares quilt -- accomplishing two purposes at once.

1. Test the yardage/measurements/math on another quilt kit pattern.
2. Make a quilt for my sister. She loves the simpler designs and when she saw the one I was drafting she casually mentioned how good it would look with little tufts (tied), which is her way of hinting that she wants me to make one for her.

Color Theory and Balance

The values in this photo are nearly opposite, notice how the high contrast between the dark of the evergreens and the light of the backlit fall leaves is emphasized and echoed by the dark streaks of tree trunks and branches. The asymmetry of the photo still holds appeal because the large dark tree is echoed by the smaller dark tree and the light leaves are anchored by dark trunks. When making a modern quilt remember that interspersing your color values in a balanced way will give you a harmonious whole.

Mist

Behold, God is great, and we know him not;
the number of his years is unsearchable.
For he draws up the drops of water;
they distill his mist in rain,
which the skies pour down
and drop on mankind abundantly.

~Job 36: 26-28

My view may be a bit different, this photo was snapped along the Blue Ridge during my last trip, but the weather this morning is this same foggy shade of drizzle. It is a morning made for mugs of tea and wooly socks and small furry dogs warming your lap while you type with one hand. This is Novemberish weather, snuggle down and stay cozy weather, go for a walk with the wind in your face and feel alive even as everything around you proclaims the cessation of summer weather.

As I stare out the window and warm my hands on my mug of tea, it seems to me that we are like the mists, here for a while and then the seasons change and we are gone. Do we water the land? Do we hug the mountains and rest amid His creation? Do we feel gratitude for every moment we are given -- even the rainy days? Or do we scatter, frenetic and fast-paced, seeking over hill and vale for the next thing to occupy us? Do we plan tomorrow at the expense of what the Lord would have us do today?

Come now, you who say,"Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit"— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." ~ James 4:13-15