Winds of Change!

Change is coming!  After a difficult month of July, which I wrote about in the previous post, things are looking up!  Last Sunday, I ordered take-out Chinese food, but I didn't eat my fortune cookie until the next afternoon.  This was my fortune!  Within an hour of reading the fortune I received a phone call offering me a new job, working in Postpartum at the hospital that is just 3 blocks from my home!  

Praise be to God for answered prayer and for keeping his hand on me and my life!   

The verse that I have had taped to my computer, that I have meditated on during this difficult time is this one: 

The Lord upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down.  

Psalm 145:14 

He has lifted me up and upheld me during my rough days.  I am so very grateful, so very blessed.

The week previous, I had decided to look at what other jobs in my field might be available.  One popped up unexpectedly for the hospital near my home, where I had applied twice previously and been told that they wouldn't hire me due to the fact that I have an Associate's degree in nursing and not a bachelor's degree.  With much prayer, I updated my resume and submitted my application on Friday afternoon.  I received an e-mail back on Monday asking for a phone interview, which  then took place on Wednesday.  At the phone interview, they asked to set up an in-person interview.  That happened on Friday.  On Monday, I had the job offer!   I am so very happy and relieved to be able to work so close to home again.  It's less than a 10 minute walk from my front door!  

I have put my resignation in with my current employer and am looking forward to a couple weeks off between jobs to regroup and prepare for the changes!  So excited!  

With so much stress lifted,  I have at last had energy to put towards stitching!  First up is my CQJP 2015 project.  As much as I liked the bright green fabric and how it made the blocks stand out, I couldn't get past the glaring brightness of it, the full-on 60's/70's vibe it had.  That wasn't how I pictured it in my mind, so it was back to the drawing board.  I went ahead and added the bright pink borders to the blocks.  Then it was time to try out some other background fabrics.  I tried a pink/orange/purple variegated batik.  It was ok, but lacked warmth.  The green I already knew was out.  i tried a more subdued pink/orange batik, which I liked, but it still was missing something.  The blocks just didn't seem at home on it.  So I pulled out the original piece of fabric I had bought, back when I first started working on the blocks.  Without the pink borders, the blocks just got lost on it, and so it had been set aside.  But now, with the pink borders, the blocks came to life and just sing!  I cut the sashing and had just snippets left!  Couldn't have been more perfect! 

With the blocks pieced together, I turned it over and discovered that I like the back almost as much as the front!  It certainly has it's own beauty to it!  

Now, the front completed and I am SO happy with it.  It looks much more like how I had envisioned it in the beginning.  I love how the greens of the blocks stand out and how they've lost their yellow/orange cast.  

Then it was time to play with ideas for finishing the top.  Lots of ideas, much time and effort put into making decisions about how to deal with the sashing.  

Some backing was in order.  I was going to use the same dark pink fabric that borders the blocks, but it is so tight and difficult to stitch through, that I opted for a simpler fabric with a looser weave for the back.  

When it came time to bast everything together, Thomas sat there making sure that nothing moved unnecessarily!  He was quite the critic!  

With the quilt stretched on a quilting frame, I tried out some hand quilting in a dark pink thread, but have since pulled this out.  You'll have to wait to see the finished project to see what I used instead!  It's coming along nicely!  

Even after all this time working on the CQJP 2015 blocks, I still find the bright colors tiring for my eyes, so it was a pleasure to bring out my Mollie Feathers project to work on in between.  A couple of dedicated days saw all the little blocks pieced together using a faux paper piecing technique that I learned from Jude Hill of Sprit Cloth.  (If you want to know more, check out her class, Spirit Cloth 101) There is something I find incredibly satisfying to take all these tiny bits of cloth and put them together into a new whole.  

I then used a similar technique to add the inner dark border between the featherstitched panel and the blocks.  I'll use it again to add the outer border.  I was going to add some texture stitching to the blocks, but have decided I like them without it on this particular project!  Hope to have this completed this weekend... but Grandbaby #1 is due any moment, so it's entirely possible that I'm going to be a bit distracted!  

p.s. Please pardon the somewhat blurry phone photos in this post!  Once the final projects are complete, you may be assured that there will be real photos taken with much better focus and a closer look at the details!