When Life Gives You Scraps -- Make a Vest!!

My dad used to quote the old saying, ‘when life gives you lemons make lemonade’. Someone once gave me a refrigerator magnet that switched that saying around to ‘when life gives you scraps make a quilt’ – well I took it a little farther this weekend and took my scraps from Starry Starry Night and made a vest!

Quilt Market and Quilt Festival will soon be heading to H-town (end of Oct/first of Nov) and I don’t have a thing to wear (smile). Why not put all my restless energy to good use, use up some scraps and just do something plain weird, yet therapeutic. And that I did!

No piecing pattern to speak of. I had an orphan block I had made from my leftovers years ago when I pieced Starry Starry Night tucked safely in the UFO bag along with all the extra fabric and trimmings from when I changed the border on this particular quilt, so why not jumble it all together on a muslin base to foundation piece a vest? Why not indeed!

I just finished the quilting and will later figure out how to finish off the raw edges, but for now, I have a quilted almost-finished vest to show for my “day off.” Now all I have to do is figure out if I want it to button to the left or to the right. Sigh.

Funny I should mention “joy” last night – you’d think my pastor spies on me or something (smile) – the sermon today revolved around the life of Paul and how even bound in chains in prison he remained joyful.

It was a good reminder that happiness is based on happenings. Happiness comes and goes, humanly speaking it’s something we can’t really control because we don’t control our circumstances; where on the other hand, joy is a choice and a state of mind – something which we can control. In other words, happiness is what happens around me and to me, but joy is what happens inside of me, totally my decision to experience joy even if I'm not happy in my circumstances.

Pastor Ron also reminded us that many times God works through adversity – such as the storm we have just experienced, or it could be other “storms” and trials in life. Yet we can manifest joy, by choice, in the midst of adversity and be a testimony in our response to circumstances by letting Christ shine in our lives through this choice of being joyful. By His design the “chains” of our lives can be a launching pad to share the Word of God. In the case of Paul, others were encouraged by Paul’s response to be joyful in his suffering, his joy was contagious and gave others courage and through this the church was strengthen. Pastor Ron encouraged us to choose joy in the mist of the aftermath of Ike - it is our prayer that people come to know the Lord and that the church be strengthened and our joy be contagious.

Hum, perhaps when I look at this vest, and hopefully wear it to festival, I’ll be reminded to be joyfully contagious in my coat of many colors as my husband just dubbed my creation (smile).