A New Perspective on Crazy Quilts
I've never really liked crazy quilts, those quilts made up of random fabrics, without order or pattern. I have appreciated quilts for many years and sewn a number of quilts through the years (including one for each grandchild, which adds up to a fair number of quilts!), but I started a crazy quilt this summer all because of a change of perspective.
When classes finished this spring and I began to have some time to do other things, one of the things on my list to accomplish this summer was to organize my sewing area. I decided to watch some YouTube videos on organizing fabric, which lead to watching YouTube quilting tutorials (frequently while preparing dinner) and you probably can imagine where things went from there.
So far this summer, I have sewn, basted and begun quilting the baby quilt for the grandson we are anticipating in September. I have sewn from scratch or finished up three other quilt tops (to be quilted later) and started a few others.
But in the process of sorting fabrics, I decided to cut the smaller fabrics into sizes suggested in a quilting book I recently read (see a pattern??) to be used in a scappy quilts. But then I saw a tutorial on "crumb" quilts, which are quilts made from little scraps that wouldn't even work to cut into a "uniform" scrap size and I saw beauty in taking those little crumbs of fabric and creating something of beauty, even if it didn't fit my love of pattern. And while crumb quilts and crazy quilts are not the same thing technically, it is because of their randomness that I never really appreciated them. I'm a math teacher. I teach how a key to understanding math is learning to see patterns. How we need to look for patterns in life. How patterns help us to glimpse a God of order. How the world operates according to a set of very specific patterns. Yep. A big lover of pattern.
However, now I begin each sewing time with 10 minutes of stitching together these little scraps into quilt blocks.
Then came another video on different ways to put together crumb quilts, and so I have begun using these crumb quilt blocks to put together another baby quilt for the kids at Casa Providencia in Panama.
It stuck me as I was sewing the quilt blocks of the appropriateness of making a crumb quilt for the children at Casa Providencia. They are children who the world sees as not worth much, could easily be just thrown away. But they are made in the image of Christ, they are of great value and those at Casa Providencia care for them as ones who are "precious in His sight."
My prayer is that my crumb quilts will be a display of beauty and that they will be a way to visually display how something that is considered just a scrap, something that could be tossed, can become a thing of beauty and of great use.
Lord, your love for these little ones is great. You can take lives that others see as unimportant, expendable, not worth our investment and make them a thing of beauty. You can create beauty even out of something where we don't see the pattern! You can take all the scraps, all the little crumbs of our lives, even those that we deem worthless and when we place them in Your hands, You use them to bring beauty. You can use them to bring honor to Yourself.
Yes, Lord.
When classes finished this spring and I began to have some time to do other things, one of the things on my list to accomplish this summer was to organize my sewing area. I decided to watch some YouTube videos on organizing fabric, which lead to watching YouTube quilting tutorials (frequently while preparing dinner) and you probably can imagine where things went from there.
So far this summer, I have sewn, basted and begun quilting the baby quilt for the grandson we are anticipating in September. I have sewn from scratch or finished up three other quilt tops (to be quilted later) and started a few others.
But in the process of sorting fabrics, I decided to cut the smaller fabrics into sizes suggested in a quilting book I recently read (see a pattern??) to be used in a scappy quilts. But then I saw a tutorial on "crumb" quilts, which are quilts made from little scraps that wouldn't even work to cut into a "uniform" scrap size and I saw beauty in taking those little crumbs of fabric and creating something of beauty, even if it didn't fit my love of pattern. And while crumb quilts and crazy quilts are not the same thing technically, it is because of their randomness that I never really appreciated them. I'm a math teacher. I teach how a key to understanding math is learning to see patterns. How we need to look for patterns in life. How patterns help us to glimpse a God of order. How the world operates according to a set of very specific patterns. Yep. A big lover of pattern.However, now I begin each sewing time with 10 minutes of stitching together these little scraps into quilt blocks.
Then came another video on different ways to put together crumb quilts, and so I have begun using these crumb quilt blocks to put together another baby quilt for the kids at Casa Providencia in Panama.
It stuck me as I was sewing the quilt blocks of the appropriateness of making a crumb quilt for the children at Casa Providencia. They are children who the world sees as not worth much, could easily be just thrown away. But they are made in the image of Christ, they are of great value and those at Casa Providencia care for them as ones who are "precious in His sight."
My prayer is that my crumb quilts will be a display of beauty and that they will be a way to visually display how something that is considered just a scrap, something that could be tossed, can become a thing of beauty and of great use.Lord, your love for these little ones is great. You can take lives that others see as unimportant, expendable, not worth our investment and make them a thing of beauty. You can create beauty even out of something where we don't see the pattern! You can take all the scraps, all the little crumbs of our lives, even those that we deem worthless and when we place them in Your hands, You use them to bring beauty. You can use them to bring honor to Yourself.
Yes, Lord.
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