Sunday Sermons: Testimony of the Book of Mormon

The Book of Mormon is true and was given to bring happiness and hope to the faithful in the travail of the last days. Brothers and sisters, God always provides safety for the soul, and with the Book of Mormon he has again done that in our time.
-Jeffrey R. Holland

National Sewing Month

I love sewing and have plenty of material witnesses. -Unknown

You may have heard. September is National Sewing Month. A month devoted to sewing all day, every day? Oh yes. I'm totally on board with that . I haven't checked into it, but I'm assuming that the people in charge will be sending someone out to take care of the cooking and cleaning while I enjoy my month of non-stop sewing.

I've made a list of things I'd like to accomplish this month. Wanna see? Great ! I knew you would. Here we go:

• Finish satin edged fleece blanket for new nehpew, born 6/30.
{Cut, pinned and ready to sew.}
• Bind flannel and minkee patchwork squares baby quilt for new nephew, born 9/1.
{Currently at the quilters. Anyone ever use minkee for binding? Tips, please?}
• Assemble, quilt and bind nine-patch quilt in Frolic for most amazing neighbor/friend/woman/mother ever, baby girl due 9/30.
{Current obsession. Quilt top started thursday night and is this close to finished.}
• Assemble Pinwheel Sampler quilt top.
{Seven more seams and it will be all together.}
• Assemble Rainbow Sherbet Snowball quilt top.
{Blocks are ready to be laid out on the living room floor design wall and then stacked for sewing together.}
• Keep current with the Chubby Stars Quilt Along.
{Focus snowball fabric picked and ready to be sewn, waiting for JoAnn's coupons to become valid so I can buy solids for the background and star points, need supplemental fabrics for snowball blocks and chain blocks.}
• Keep current with the Free Motion Quilt Along.
{Need to piece easy quilt top and pin baste it, prepare practice pad and practice stitching.}
• Catch up on Cat's Twilight Mystery Block of the Month.
{Two of seven blocks finished. Actually, I think another block was released this weekend. Lots of catch-up work to do here!}
• Make 1 Apron.
{Fabrics washed and pressed, ruffle and pocket cut and waiting for the rest to be cut.}
• Make 1 Abbey Bag.
{Outside of the bag complete, need to pick the rest of the fabrics for it from stash and cut them.}

That is quite a list, no? But since someone from the National Sewing Month committee is coming to take over the chores, I can whip through it, easy peasy. There is only one problem. This morning Grace threw a little tantrum and refuses to sew another stitch. She insists that I take her in for a good servicing before she'll do another thing for me. I suppose she'll get her way {which leads me to wonder what would happen if I refused to do any housework until I got a day at the spa }, unless I decide to teach her a lesson and replace her with her big sister, Elizabeth {how cool would that be to have a machine named after me?}.

I've had Grace for a year and a half now, and I love her. She replaced the old Singer I got for my 17th birthday {went halvsies with my parents for it} and with all the fancy features she came with it was like going from Bella's Truck to the Mercedes Edward bought her as an engagement present {yeah, I know . I've been telling it for a year and a half now and I'm the only one who thinks that joke is funny}. She's a great machine and I take good care of her. I dust every time I wind a bobbin and in between every project. I checked the manual for instructions on how to oil her, and the only thing it said about that was where not to oil her. So, every once in a while I drop some in the holes in the face plate. But since I sew every day, it is time to take her in to be oiled in all those tricky places that only the machine repair man knows about. The dealership where I bought her sends all the machines to the dealer in Salt Lake. Pick-ups and deliveries are on Wednesdays. I'll miss her. A lot.

Since I'll be without Grace for a minimum of 12 days, this is my revised National Sewing Month to-do list:
• Fall garden clean-up {it's a little early, I know, but you gotta roll with the punches}
• Clean out the fridge and freezer
• Organize pantry/laundry room
• Clean living room carpets
• Organize and de-junk toy area
• Organize and de-clutter the Little Bugs' bedrooms

Favourite Things Friday: Music

Music is forever; music should grow and mature with you, following you right on up until you die. -Paul Simon

I ♥ music. These are just a few of my favorites {Playlist didn't have everything I wanted. There was nothing by Ryan Shupe and the Rubberband. You can check out my faves by them here}. Uncharacteristically, I don't have much more to say than that. I'll let the music to the talking for me today.

Today's post brought to you by:

The Chubby Stars Quilt Along

Red, white, black, and gray always go together. -Frank Chimero


I have quilt projects to last me the next five years. At least. All of them are quilt projects that I love and intend to finish. But sometimes things come together in such a way that it can only be mean one thing. Another quilt project. Here's how it happened this time.

My sweet friend, Wanda, has been cleaning out her stash. She sent me a box full of goodies and told me to do what I like with them. There were quite a few fabric treasures in there {some of which will end up as bloggy giveaways -- not because they aren't great, but because I'm just one girl with a million projects already and because want to share the love}. There was one piece of fabric in particular that really caught my eye. I knew it needed an extra special project to show it off. I wondered if it would be pretty in another snowball quilt. I'll be finished with my second snowball quilt along quilt eventually {that seems to be the only project that gets any sort of regular attention} and I've been thinking of ways to continue the snowball fun. The fabric went in the definitely keeping pile and thoughts of different things I could do with it settled in the to be arranged file in the back of my mind.

This weekend I was introduced to Tracey of traceyjay quilts. I enjoyed her blog immensely. While I was there, I noticed that she was just starting a quilt along. I was really impressed by her thoroughness. She'd compiled a chart of yardage needed for different quilt sizes and made up a little layout sheet for coloring in. And she already had a pretty sample worked up. But, I said to myself, I don't need another project. I left her blog, a new follower, and then went about my business. Somewhere between lunch and laundry, Tracey's Chubby Stars quilt along met up with that fabulous floral fabric Wanda sent me and an idea was born.

I pulled the fabric, threw it in to wash and had it pressed and cut before bedtime. I only had about ¾ of a yard to work with, so I decided to make my quilt a little smaller than even the smallest of quilts Tracey included on her chart. I'm going with a 5 x 7 layout, which is 40" x 56" before borders. Even reducing the size, I don't have quite enough fabric for all of the snowball blocks. I decided that I could live with that because I didn't want to make the quilt any smaller than 5 x 7.

While I was planning this project out in my head, I decided to use Kona Cottons in Coal and Ash for the star points and background in the chain blocks. I happen to have a bit of Kona in Coal on hand, so I put it with the floral fabric, but it was off. The grey in the leaves is a khakishh-grey. I also noticed that there are the palest of yellow in the accent flowers. So, I am hoping that I can find a nice khaki grey for the star points and a pretty pale yellow for the background. I've got enough of the floral fabric to do roughly a third of the chain pieces and I hope to find a couple of pretty florals in red and yellow to fill in the empty snowball blocks and finish off the chains.

I used Tracey's coloring sheet and fiddled around with the floral blocks. I don't know if I'm set on this layout. I'll definitely play with it when I get to my blocks. In any case, this is definitely a quilt I'm going to love.

I Want to Ride My Bicycle

Bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my
Bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride my bike
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride it where I like
-Queen, Bicycle Race

It is technically still summer, but those lazy do-nothing days are over. My Little Bugs are already in the middle of their second week of school. Even though we're on a state mandated regular schedule now, some of the fun of summer has carried over into our new routine. We did Extreme Bike Makeovers this summer and they have made a daily appearance in the Little Bugs' commute to school. Everybody loves it.

To tell you how this came about, I have to tell a little back story. The Easter Bunny got carried away one year and brought new bikes for the Little Bugs and me {the Bunny asked Mr. Bug if he wanted a bike too, but Mr. Bug was happy with some nice dark chocolate a gift card to Barnes & Noble}. Grasshopper loved his Spiderman bike {with training wheels} and rode it for hours and hours. He was so cute. He'd put on his helmet and say, I'm going biking. He still uses the word bike as a verb. He never says he's going to ride his bike; he's always going to bike somewhere. It cracks me up .

LadyBug wasn't super happy with hers though, because it had Dora the Explorer all over it and even though Dora isn't super girly, she doesn't have superpowers. It was the smallest bike the Easter Bunny could find {and let me tell you, trying to find bikes at Easter is like trying to find the Big Bunny himself} and the only one {for girls} that wasn't pink. The whole pedals and balance and moving forward and steering was a little scary for LadyBug and she had a couple of spills, which put her off. So we got a trailer bike for her and I handled the balance and speed and steering and she was a great pedaler .

We rode bikes . . . oh, excuse me. Let me start over. We went biking a lot that summer. The next summer? Not so much. Last summer . . . hardly at all. But this summer has been the summer of bikes. The Little bugs spent a week with their cousins {Miss Butterfly, Mantis, Capn' Underpants and Roly Poly Bug} and they rode bikes together a ton. Grasshopper became attached to the bike he rode up there. Miss Butterfly had outgrown it {have I mentioned that she has a tall dad?} and had a new bike, so Grasshopper brought her old one home.

The bike that Grasshopper brought home, as it was, was on its second life. In its first life, it was a pink {girls} BMX bike by Huffy. As a matter of fact, it was my pink BMX bike. I got it for my ninth birthday {which was a bit of irony, since my birthday is in January and it is a little difficult to ride on ice and snow }. My sister, Julie {Miss Butterfly's mom}, got an identical bike for her birthday later that year. Our dad painted our names on the chain guards so we could tell them apart. I'm pretty sure that our younger sisters even rode these bikes after Julie and I had outgrown them. Eventually the pedals on one of the bikes needed replacing {I'm not sure which still has the original pedals, but I'm guessing it was Julie's because of the bike style} so one of the bikes had spiky pedals and one had flat pedals. Julie took my bike for Miss Butterfly because hers had the spiky pedals on it.

Even though my bike was pink and pretty and a just a little tough, it took me a long time to figure it out how to ride it. My dad would take me out and he'd run behind me holding on to the seat, over and over and over, up and down the sidewalk in front of our house. As soon as he'd let go, I would crash. Some of the crashes weren't so bad. I'd just use the grass as a soft place to land. But then there were a few bad ones into sidewalks and bushes and trees, which would result in me taking a little break from the bike until all the scrapes had healed over. Even after I learned to ride the bike properly, I still had a few good spills. I slid in a pile of gravel on a newly paved road and ended up with scrapes from my knee to my ankle, on my palm and up my arm to my elbow. My dad heard me scream from two blocks away. Even now, I still don't feel all that steady on a bike .

Back to our summer: when the kids got home, Grasshopper with his new bike {which had been painted turquoise while in the care of Miss Butterfly} in tow, we decided that we were going to give the bikes an update for more riding fun. We got new handlebar grips for both bikes. We removed the Dora seat from LadyBug's and got her a new seat and pedals {which didn't fit . Still working on that}. And with a little bit of spray paint, we breathed new life into those bikes.

And now the Little Bugs ride their bikes everywhere. They ride them to friends' houses. They ride them to pick each other up from friends' houses. Grasshopper rides his to scouts every week, which is one house and a parking lot away. It takes him longer to put his helmet on and bring his bike around than it would to walk. LadyBug likes to see how many times she can ride around the block before she runs out of wind. And they ride them to school and back every day. Grasshopper puts his bike chain over his head and one shoulder and then under the other arm. I love it because my kids are doing amazing, incredible, grown-up things. I think that is why they like it too .

Extreme Bike Makeover Design Team

Color Team: Grasshopper & LadyBug



Paint Artist: Elizabeth



Mechanical Engineering: Mr. Bug