BLOCK ONE - my new block of the month for 2020...

Indeed it is a day early, eight seven hours actually (in my part of the world), but here I sit munching on green grapes and thick slices of Brie after eight straight hours of sewing, photos, formatting, pattern writing and more formatting...and it occurred to me that I'd really enjoy time off on new year's day just to relax with my husband and experiment in the kitchen with all the eggs our hens have laid but which have not been used and are overflowing in the egg shelf of my fridge. 

But isn't it nice to receive a gift just a few hours early anyhow?

Well, what a journey this Psalm 23 project has been for me. Years of waiting for the right time, the right inspiration and God's leading to bring it all together in fabric, needle and thread. 

I knew all along it wouldn't be a quilt but it wasn't until I released Phyllis May's Kitchen as a memory book in 2019 that the idea to make a smaller book, every page dedicated to God's nature through David's beautiful psalm, began to form.

This block of the month will be free from January to October 2020 so you'll have time to finish it before CHRISTmas rolls around again. 

There are thirteen stitcheries; one on the cover and twelve inside on the pages. Nine of the pages are the complete passages from Psalm 23 and the other three are pretty 'extras' without scripture.

The twelve pages are not attached to the cover; it is used to store the book when you've made it. The pages have cotton lace spines which are sewn together to create the 23rd psalm booklet. 

When the booklet is slipped inside the cover it is secured by a ribbon closure.

I won't be showing you any of the pages other than the first because that would spoil the surprise each month, though you have already seen the cover and that will be our final month in October.

SO...let's begin this new block of the month with Psalm 23:1...

You know, reading just that one verse I can sit and ponder it for ages. There's so much within those nine words...it tells us who God is, it describes how He watches over us, it reminds us we will never have a need which He cannot meet...and it tells us that HE is enough.

I cannot tell you how often just that verse alone has encouraged me and lifted my head.

Knowing that He is all I need and will shepherd and protect me in any situation life throws my way means I never need be afraid or lost or in want.

I won't show you how to make a page until February's block is released because we need two completed stitcheries to make one page. 

 In your pattern for block 1 there's a list of requirements to make the project as a book and cover but you might prefer to use the blocks in a quilt so have a think about that before choosing your fabric and threads. You may even prefer just to stitch the blocks each month and leave that decision to the end of the year.

THE COMPLETE PSALM 23 Book Pattern is now available HERE in my Etsy Shop.

Something else I thought to share today was a quick tutorial on stitching words because I know many people struggle with it - all those little curves really frustrates them and if you're not used to stitching a lot of words it can rob you of enjoyment when making a project like this.

First thing is to stitch small.

Please go HERE and watch my backstitch tutorial because I explain very clearly about the size of the stitches and what different sizes look like.

My embroidery has 15 backstitches to the inch so my curves are nice and rounded, even the tight curves.

Go slow as you stitch the curves and feel free to unpick a few stitches and redo them. That's how I taught myself to embroider so small.

Start this project with a new needle and before that first stitch carefully feel the point of the needle. Even expensive ones can have a burr on the end and that will catch on your fabric and annoy you no end. If your needle has a burr throw it away and get another one.

A nice smooth pointed needle makes hand embroidery far more enjoyable.

Thread is important too. As threads age they become dry and break easily. Certain climates can play havoc with threads as well. If you find your thread knotting often or not gliding through the fabric smoothly you might be wise to purchase a new skein. 

I mostly use DMC (though I love Madeira too) and they are quite inexpensive.

In the tutorial over HERE that I suggest you watch, I share a free little practice pattern which has a number of curves. It's a great way to hone this skill before beginning the Psalm 23 project. 

Another tutorial you might like to watch is THIS ONE, which also includes a free practice pattern and shows how to stitch my little jenny-leaves. They are backstitched around the outer shape with a line of blanket stitch through the centre. I've used these leaves in all the Psalm 23 blocks, but instead of straight along the centre of the leaf I now like to curve the line sometimes. You can see this in the photo below...

Once I've written all the patterns for my thirteen blocks and the instructions for the pages and the cover (I'm so glad we have a real grind-the-beans-and-make-cappuccino coffee machine) this sweet Psalm 23 booklet and cover will be gifted to a dear friend, sooo...I am making another Psalm 23 just for me.

My second version is being stitched onto a white linen/cotton blend fabric and the colours are very pastel. I had some older pieces of Lecien Flower Sugar on my shelf and thought they'd be perfect...

Not sure if this will be another booklet or if a new display idea will form in my imagination, but I will show you its progress through the course of this year.

Well, that's it for me on this final day of 2019.

I'm rather exhausted and in need of a hearty meal so my beloved is going to pick up some Pho Beef Salad from our favourite Asian cafe and then we'll curl up with a movie and sparkling mineral water. I doubt we'll be awake at midnight because we've not made it to the stroke of a new year for a very long time...but really, it doesn't matter. 

Every new day is a gift, whether it's a new week, month, year or decade, so I intend to give thanks as usual tomorrow morning and pray for more opportunities to serve God and grow in grace.

BLESS YOU ALL!!

hugs

A free 2020 stitchery and a few other things...

Having a number of designs already stitched and in my 'gift idea' box is such fun when occasions roll around through the year.

But I also enjoy stitching something new, or re-doing an older design from years past.

That's what I did with this cover for my 2020 gratitude journal. Originally I shared a much smaller version in redwork to welcome 2015 and I loved it so much that it seemed just right for a remake - much larger and this time in colours and with my signature spatters of tiny applique.

Whilst stitching it I thought you might enjoy having the pattern as a new year gift?

 (download LINK at the end of this post) 

Perhaps you keep journals or diaries, maybe a housekeeping folder?? Actually, I like the idea of a new housekeeping folder - excuse me for a moment while I jot that idea down on a sticky note......(scribble scribble).....

Funny how ideas for new projects just pop into my head as I write. There was a time when I had sticky notes everywhere but now I only have a few and they last but a day because I'm diligent to write them in an Ideas Notebook before day's end.

Do you like the little bookmark too?

I bought a box of these beautiful scripture/encouragement cards a few months back and thought how lovely they'd be with a length of pastel ribbon and gifted in greeting and birthday cards.

One side of the card has a Scripture and the other side has a lovely quote or encouragement.

The thing with fun ideas though is that once you're on a roll you keep, well, rolling!

That's how I ended up with lots of bookmarks and three completed gratitude journals a week before CHRISTmas...

After completing my 2020 journal I made this gratitude journal for a dear neighbour using one of my Bird Seed blocks.

There's a button along the spine which holds a pink ribbon that wraps the journal closed with a bow.

The third gratitude journal is very different from the first two because I made it for my darling Blossom and the journal itself was not new, but my own, one in which I wrote and drew Scriptures and quotes which filled my heart a few years ago...

There's plenty of pages left for Blossom to continue this journal and perhaps one day pass it along to her girls.

The design on the cover is one I stitched in a simple grey and cream variegated thread a number of years ago to preserve my old blue Bible. It was crumbling at the seams and I wanted to hold it together so I made a cover because there are so many hand written notes in the margins and passages underlined...it simply meant a great deal because there's part of my journey with the Lord inside. 

This new version of the same design is larger and just as meaningful because God's WORD is living and powerful, and still the anchor which holds my life steady in the many storms which have ridden rough-shod over my years. It's also what carries my precious daughter through her own storms, and to watch her immerse time each day in the Bible, to hear her abundant and overflowing love for Jesus as she discusses with me the revelations God has shown her, to see the Jesus-type changes in her character and the effect it has on her loved ones...well, I knew this verse had to be on the cover of the handed down journal I was gifting her.

It's a precious thing to have your child weep with joy over such a gift...and it wasn't tears for the cover I made, it was the love for Jesus she saw within the pages of my old journal. 

And I know there will come a day when her daughters will feel the same reading the love their own mumma pours into the remainder of this journal and perhaps a few more. 

Sow the seed of Jesus, ladies; never stop, never lose hope, never back down, never be afraid of rejection. Just be faithful to plough the soil of your children's hearts and invite Jesus to scatter the seeds of loving and life-giving truth through you.

LINKS:

The free 2020 stitchery pattern (download available all year)

The Word of God pattern.

The Bird Seeds set of four designs. 

(see the other three below)

We had a very relaxed Christmas; just breakfast at Blossom's with all the joy and laughter a morning can hold with Cully May and Rafaella centre stage and delighting everyone.

The girls loved the dolly cribs we gave them, as well as the bedding I made. In fact Rafaella thought the crib and bedding looked too good for her dollies and climbed in herself!

Oh, we laughed and laughed!!

There's truly nothing quite like the hugs, kissed, antics and joy of granddaughters.

Ross is really hard to buy a gift for but the way to my son-in-law's heart is through traditional foods he grew up with on Cyprus so after a little probing I  found out he loves Tiropita and has not had it in years. When I walked in with a large tray of freshly baked Tiropita he was the happiest man alive!

Later that day his cousin (also from Cyrus) called and once he knew there was Tiropita at Ross and Blossom's house over he came! Apparently I made it better than most and the photos sent of them tucking in to it were happiness to my heart. 

You know, it really was a simple Christmas, yet it was one of the loveliest in many, many years. 

I find as I get older that if you listen carefully, over time most people share with you the things in their life which evoke special and loving memories...like Ross and the Tiropita. 

It was a simple gift and yet it gave him great joy and a reliving of very comforting childhood memories.

Other simple gifts for family members that morning were these small lavender sachets accompanied by those bookmarks I made.

After New Year I will show you the beautiful gifts dear Blossom made me. Truly, handmade from the heart is so very special.

I will sign off today, my final post for 2019, with a little encouragement I shared on Instagram and my FB page today, a message which carries from my heart more than I could say, but I do pray it blesses you.

“The righteous flourish...
planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God. They still bear fruit in old age;
they are ever full of sap and green.”
Psalm 92:12-14

This promise has stood the test of time; its truth resounding more and more as my years in the Lord’s service as His handmaiden pass by. The once young strong hands now bear the evidence of age marching on and yet I find beauty in my hands such as never before because they tell a story of this life; they hold miracles God-gifted in times of trial; they reach forward to the next moment, the next labour, the next embrace, the next page to turn in His living Word.
These hands will still bear fruit today and in the years to come should Jesus tarry His return because they have been freely offered to God for His moment by moment service.
Ageing is beautiful when you reflect on all He has taught; even more wonderful when you consider all He has yet to teach.

May we each stay teachable and bear the fruit He promises even into old age...

hugs,

Gentling our days at home (and that BOM sneak peek)...

I am cherishing the early dawn hours each morning when I can wander around the yard, feed my chickens, water the garden, savour the first coffee of the day, read my Bible, pray and breathe. 

The sky has been covered in cloud till about 9 or 10 each morning this week so my photos are darker than usual, yet it's a true depiction of the early hours I spend outside before scuttling inside for cool relief. 

IN THE GARDEN

The chickens are loving the ramshackle pen my husband made for them and there's plenty of shade for dust baths during the hottest part of the day. The guava tree in there is alive with bees and flowers, no doubt all the chook poo is helping, and the two hibiscus trees bloom constantly.

I was asked what the big cream drum is inside the pen. It's a compost bin Mr E built, one you can fill and tumble turn each day. One side has food scraps and the other has leaf litter and grass.

With hubby home on holidays now there's a lot of heavy manual work being done everywhere. That massive pile of mulch I showed you the other day has made it's way to the rear of the property and around the garden beside the pool. 

Our main focus is planting more shade trees and fine tuning the outside waterways and pump wells for the next wet season.

Below you can see some holes behind the large shed and these are where hubby dug out palm trees. Later today he'll fill them with strong saplings which will grow over the top of the shed and offer wonderful cooling shade in the afternoons.

Down the side of the shed three trees are already flourishing and we're hopeful by this time next year they'll at least be as tall as the shed and make a big difference. 

We removed most of the bromeliads from another garden about six weeks ago and after covering it with compost Mr E added a four inch layer of sand. At the time we were just thinking to suffocate any weeds and let the land rest until March or April when we'd plant vegetables. 

But funny things happen when you add good compost from your kitchen waste to an empty garden bed - even with a thick sand covering.

Up have popped a dozen or more thriving tomato plants, some in flower, and what looks to be a pumpkin or cucumber plant also in flower!

We've been told over and over that tomatoes will not set fruit in the tropics at this time of the year due to the 'everyday' high temperatures and humidity so this will be an unplanned but interesting experiment. 

Elsewhere around the garden there's been a lot of growth from the poinciana tree, in fact it's as tall as me now. One day we hope to sit underneath it's branches with cool drinks and a snack in the late afternoons. As it's grown five feet in just eight months we might see that dream fulfilled in another couple of years.

The winter veggie patch is untended at the moment, playing host to most of the outside potted herbs and plants because it's easier to keep them watered all together (we have to manage the water usage diligently until we can drill a bore) and they get some shade there in the morning and the late afternoon.

We will compost and mulch this garden bed when we have time, and then plant all the herbs,  geraniums and marigolds as a border, but for now there are far more needful chores to get done.

If you read the blog as we went through the January/February monsoon and floods earlier this year you'll be aware we had sandbags around the house, water lapping at the doors and four pumps moving water away from the house 24/7 for ten days and nights. In that event we learned there was much to be done around our yard/home with the guttering, water courses, pump wells, and plants in order to prevent that same result in this coming wet season.

Since March my husband has done so much - even fixed our entire roof because we lost a ceiling which flooded the laundry in February. He's also replaced and re-routed much of the guttering, replaced the pipes which carry water from the pump wells to the storm water drain down the road and now must  attend to digging and preparing more pump wells. We had two in ground, but now we'll have more. During the monsoon we had four pumps running constantly but only two were in wells so once he's completed the next stage of prevention we will have four. 

At the moment he's dug out along the side of the bedroom and a pump well is in, but he still needs to add pipes and the pump, plus the metal cover.

I'm so grateful for the cloud cover as he does this (even though it's triggering more migraines) because they are big jobs and he's doing it alone. 

Our Cockatoo friends come every morning and evening for a meal and today a Corella arrived to join them. It's the first time we've seen one here.

You would laugh if you were here with me in the mornings. There's always at least one bird sitting on the clothesline waiting for it's turn at the feeder and I always warn them "Do NOT poop on my washing or no more breakfast for you!" 

So far they are listening.

One of the four cuttings I took from various frangipani trees earlier this year has decided to flourish whilst the other three chose to depart this world as compost.

I am praying this one is a red frangipani - apparently the coloured ones are less prone to bugs and disease.

The strawberry guava near the back of the house looks like giving another bumper crop as it did after Christmas last year, but the fruit is so tiny that I occasionally ponder whether we should pull it out and plant an orange tree there instead...but the bees love it, and it's very pretty.

Our olive tree near the back door is happily offering forth new leaves and appears to be much happier there than where we'd originally planted it. As the months go by we discover more and more 'happy' and 'unhappy' planting spots around the house. The happy ones we nurture, the unhappy ones are marked down for a compost intensive. 

IN THE KITCHEN

With no work commitments until late January, my husband's schedule is fluid and we tend to eat when we're hungry and not to a school timetable - which is very gentling to our days.

Each morning is the same; fresh fruit salad, muesli and yoghurt with a freshly brewed iced coffee. 

Lunch is whenever Mr E comes in for an afternoon break from the heat and usually consists of crackers, cheese, olives, fruit and dip, or perhaps a toasted sandwich and boiled egg with carrot juice or kombucha.

At night I've been making things like spanakopita, roast chicken and vegetables, lentil dhal and rice, mexican corn & avocado salad with thick slices of sour dough, spaghetti bol, loaded potatoes or crumbed chicken and salad.

The other day I had loads of carrots to grate (because our chickens love grated carrots) and once I had a few days supply for the hens I kept on grating (love the Kleva Sumo Slicer for this!) so I could bake a carrot cake. It was a recipe I'd not tried before and oh my, it is the best one ever.

I baked mine in a large square tin so it was a little quicker than the recipe and easier to slice and store.

Covered in lemon cream cheese icing it was a delicious hit with the family!

IN THE SEWING ROOM

You saw the other day how I chose to display four of my orphan stitchery blocks, and I've finished another since then as well. 

But two projects I have LOVED sewing this past week are dolly crib sets for Rafaella and Cully May...

Cully May is the bright and bubbly one of Blossom's girls so I've made her dolly crib set in reds, green and yellow. Have to say it was even fun to make the mattresses!

Rafaella is quiet and rather shy, so I chose pretty pinks and aquas for her set...

The little white cribs were $20 each from Kmart (Australia) and the crib bedding sets were all sewn from my stash of fabrics and wadding. Can't wait to see our granddaughters reactions on Christmas Day. In fact I'd make them dollies too if I had a simple pattern and some spare time...but that's okay because they do have their beloved bunnies which go to bed with them every night so I imagine these will become special bunny cribs.

SNEAK PEEK

Next year I am sharing a brand new free Block of the Month. The project will run for ten months and I'll launch this project with the first block on January 1st...

I loved making the large pocketed memory book "Phyllis May's Kitchen" this year and thought the 23rd Psalm would be very special finished as a small book with pockets for keeping prayers and bible study notes.

Each block becomes a page and I won't be showing them until the day they're released but here's a look at the inside of the cover without any pages yet...

I would LOVE for you to share The 23rd Psalm : 2020 Block of the Month  photo on your blogs or social media because that's the best way to let your friends and followers know about it.

Just alternate click on the BOM photo and save it to your computer or tablet. Use my blog address as the link.

((thank you))

Well, this is my last post until after Christmas, so dear readers, friends and sisters-in-Christ, may I offer you heartfelt gratitude for being here through 2019, reading and commenting, sharing bits and pieces of your own life along the way, encouraging and inspiring me, and for praying when I had need or you felt led.

May our LORD JESUS, our precious Saviour, become your all-in-all today and every day. May He guide your hearts and minds to love Him more, direct your paths to safer shores, provide your needs more than your wants, lift you high that you may not fall, season your tongue with words of grace and truth, capture your attention when the world lures it away, and cover you always in the shadow of His wings.

merry and blessed Christmas dear ones