Spooky Days

I haven't written for a while, but decided this might be a good time to start again. Over the past few months, I haven't spent much time at the sewing machine. My sewing has been more focused on handwork and taking advantage of spare bits of time wherever I can catch them. 

Believe it or not, this project caught my eye back in late May. It features fabrics and a pattern designed by a quilter I follow on Instagram, Amanda Niederhauser, aka Jedi Craft Girl. You can check out her website here and also follow her on Instagram. A number of her patterns feature cats, and her posts often feature her Bengal cat, Mufasa.

This fun piece went together quite quickly and now is a nice Halloween accent in my upstairs family room. The project features fabrics from Amanda's Scaredy Cat fabric line that was distributed by Riley Blake designs. The hard part for me was deciding how to arrange the fabric squares to ensure variety and to avoid having the cat or the letters sitting over black squares. I also wanted to keep the pieces that featured a cat's face or a pumpkin in its entirety positioned for visibility. Fortunately, the cat and the letters had been laser cut and pre-fused - always a nice bonus! If you look closely at the pictures below, you might be able to see the blanket stitching outlining the letters and the cat. Of course, black on black can be a bit challenging.

I chose to have the piece quilted using an edge-to-edge bat design. It seemed a fun choice to add to the mix of cats, pumpkins, and bones without being too distracting. If you look closely at the picture of the back, you should get an idea of how the bats are scattered across the design.

I'm certainly not going to argue that 2020 hasn't been filled with spooky days. It's probably fair to say that most of us have grown quite weary of COVID-19 and the prevailing uncertainty that has come with it. Independent of COVID-19, these past few months have brought their own share of discouragement and uncertainty my way. Over the past few weeks, I've been spending some time in the Old Testament books of Isaiah and Jeremiah. While a major theme of each of these books is the coming and then actual judgment on the nations of Israel and Judah, God never leaves His people without hope. Even though the time of judgment came, it would not last forever. This particular verse from Isaiah has been a source of hope and comfort to me over the past few weeks, and I hope you will find it meaningful as well.

I will lead the blind by a way they did not know;

I will guide them on paths they have not known.

I will turn darkness to light in front of them

and rough places into level ground.

This is what I will do for the,

and I will not forsake them. Isaiah 42:16 (HCSB)