“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” ~James 1:2-3
Merry Christmas! I hope everyone had a blessed day surrounded by friends and family!
Through much patience and perseverance, mostly by my wonderful husband, my new Amara ST has been built and is ready for new quilting adventures. The journey of building this machine was not as serious as the actual trials that we often face in our day to day life, but it served to remind me of how patience in the simple things brings us more peace and joy than frustration ever could. The Bible talks a lot about patience and perseverance!
By now, must of us have made some kind of build-it-yourself furniture. Sometimes, the instructions are pretty straight forward… Sometimes they are not. Unfortunately, this lift table’s instructions were lacking in a few details and some tools. Thankfully, with the help of Zachary and his new tool kit, we were able to put the table together. Once that was complete, hooking up the sewing machine was pretty simple, though a two man job! I watched so many videos about this machine before I took my first stitch. The threading is more complicated than I am used to, and the technology is about 40 years newer than my Bernina 1260. To say it simply, I was scared to start!
Through a few tears by me and constant patience and perseverance by Zachary who encouraged me the entire time, we managed to practice a few basic free motion techniques! Not too bad for my first time on this machine. We still need to work on some tension issues, but overall, I am extremely excited to continue practicing and start my first project. The regulated stitching is a cool feature that I have never had and will take some time to get use. You can see in the bottom right corner of this picture where the regulated stitches are. This makes the quilting look much cleaner than I can do on my own.
Trials in our lives are as inevitable as ripping out seams. They are painful and time consuming. It could be caused by our own mistake or a machine failure; however, no matter the cause, we rip seams out because we have hope that we can fix it. “Not only that, but we rejoice in our suffering, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” ~Romans 5:3-5
One of my very first quilts was a simple nine patch baby blanket. With the help of my gramma, I was able to make a pretty blue and green nine patch for my violin teacher’s new baby boy. We sandwiched the quilt and did a diagonal quilting along the nine patch. My gramma showed me how to start the stitches really small to anchor and then switch back to a regular stitch to finish out the line. I was quickly on my way to finishing the quilt, until I made a mistake. I sewed half the length of the quilt before I realized I forgot to switch back to the regular size stitching! Through perseverance, my gramma spent a few hours ripping tiny stitches out of this quilt being very careful not to rip the fabric. Through her patience, she taught me a valuable lesson about paying attention. She had the opportunity to get frustrated, but that would not have helped the situation and could have deterred me from loving quilting. Quilting teaches us patience and perseverance! We can be confident that we will face trials and suffering in our life, but we also have the knowledge that through Christ we may rejoice in the good and bad times!
From my family to yours, we wish you many blessing this Christmas season!
God bless and happy quilting!!
Quilt Bus 
Hunter, hope you and Zach had a great Christmas and New Year. I really enjoy reading your blogs. Looks like you are having fun and challenge with your new project. Praying for you and Zach.
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