This starts a new year. I don't want any family deaths this year. Just 5 days ago, our youngest son died. This morning our last son left left to return to his heavenly home very unexpectedly. Our house is very, very quiet. I have cried buckets of tears. I don't want to continue these buckets because I have a very strong faith in Jesus Christ. I know he is alive. I fully believe that because our Savior was resurrected, all of us will be resurrected one day. I am a Mormon. In our church we believe that there is a time between death and the time we are resurrected. Right after each one of us dies, we are taken to see our Savior and then to a glorious place of peace and joy, or a not so great place if we have spent our lives being someone like Stalin or Hitler. I have felt such peace these last days with my children and almost all my grandchildren (13 total) here with us. I have felt the spirit of our son, Rob with me a few times. He is at peace, feeling great comfort.
I saw the opportunity to make 2018 quilting goals and knew I had to go in!
1. Make this blog a reality with pictures, etc. I need to start posting pictures of my quilts. Not today, but soon.
2. Continue to work on those WIPs. I finished one last year and how good that felt!
3. Get those Sew Sampler projects sewn I have 18 now. Oops.
4. Sew 5 more grandchildren quilts. I have 8 done which is a big accomplishment! They are all twin sized. Then the oldest one got married last year so I made her a queen sized one for her wedding. Noelle and Tristen love it!
5. Sew the log cabin blocks together for the Christmas quilt I started in December.
6. Use more of that Christmas fabric I bought 4 years ago. Another Oops.
7. Enjoy the sewing journey. I love sewing. I love the cutting process. I love the quilting part. We also gave away our son's cat. I will miss my quilting assistant but I was allergic to her. I will think of how she was always in the way when I was cutting out and how many times I had to pick her up or move her tail. When I would lay the blocks out to see which blocks should go in what row, Kalette would jump right in, turning blocks over with such joy and delight. I have so many little videos of this. She absolutely loved the batting. If I used a soft backing, I would need to move her many, many times.
8. Be so very grateful for my life, my husband, my family, this glorious earth, my fabulous neighbors who sent in so many delicious meals, and all the many blessings I have. We only have two of the quilts I have made because I have given away all the others. We will continue this pattern to help show love to others. This isn't sewing, but the mind controls everything we do.
Monday, January 1, 2018
Quilts for China
Oh, oh. This is the beginning of the blog I was supposed to start in 2012 when we were teaching in China. Yes, I am a little late. Now we are home and busy being retired. Sew busy. Right now I just finished the first of four wedding quilts I am taking back to China this fall for three weddings of former students. The fourth quilt will be for a student whom we assume will be getting married. We do not know when or if we will ever return to China.
The first time we went to China in 2010 we went on a two week tour. It was magnificent. And tiring! Hot, too! We landed in Beijing and toured there for a few days, flew on to Xian to walk all agape at the Warriors, and then flew next to Guilin. At that time I was convinced there was no more beautiful place in the world than Guilin. We did go there again while we taught in China, thank goodness! Our last big city to visit was Shanghai, pronounced correctly with the a as in father. We did the usual visits and then spent a day at the World Expo where we almost melted. Laws in China forbid workers from being required to work beyond 103 Fahrenheit so the government doesn't ever report the weather higher than 102. I will say, though, that the knee brace I was wearing that day had metal stabilizing bars built in the fabric. They left burns on the sides of my leg. That had never happened anywhere in the US.
What I want to emphasize is that you can remove your body from China but you really cannot totally remove your heart. Once you have been there and interacted with Chinese people, you leave part of yourself always in China. Thus, I am making these quilts for presents. I cannot make quilts for the 400 students I taught and the 400 students my husband taught, but these students are the ones who came here to the US and stayed with us so we are still in correspondence with them.
The first time we went to China in 2010 we went on a two week tour. It was magnificent. And tiring! Hot, too! We landed in Beijing and toured there for a few days, flew on to Xian to walk all agape at the Warriors, and then flew next to Guilin. At that time I was convinced there was no more beautiful place in the world than Guilin. We did go there again while we taught in China, thank goodness! Our last big city to visit was Shanghai, pronounced correctly with the a as in father. We did the usual visits and then spent a day at the World Expo where we almost melted. Laws in China forbid workers from being required to work beyond 103 Fahrenheit so the government doesn't ever report the weather higher than 102. I will say, though, that the knee brace I was wearing that day had metal stabilizing bars built in the fabric. They left burns on the sides of my leg. That had never happened anywhere in the US.
What I want to emphasize is that you can remove your body from China but you really cannot totally remove your heart. Once you have been there and interacted with Chinese people, you leave part of yourself always in China. Thus, I am making these quilts for presents. I cannot make quilts for the 400 students I taught and the 400 students my husband taught, but these students are the ones who came here to the US and stayed with us so we are still in correspondence with them.
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