UNITY
I'm 'organized' now - and it's time to get started! Unity - the design where you slash around the middle of the sweatshirt and add a 'different' bottom is the one that says to me it wants to be used with this grouping of a Brass USA Comfort Color Sweatshirt, this great hunk of oriental cotton fabric, black yarn to couch, a black chenille striped sweater (from Goodwill), and oriental coins and 'things' as you see in the picture to the right.






The challenge here is that the sweatshirt is a 2XL. My duct tape double is not a 2XL - more like a 10/12. So - don't expect it to all look 'fitted' on the pictures. Eventually, I sell all my samples and I need to offer a wide size range. Also - as I design for patterns, I want to include all size ranges - offering attractive designs and guidance for a wide range of sizes. I think that is - as Martha Stewart says, "A Good Thing".


To the left, you can see my beginning - I've cut the sweatshirt apart in the middle - with angles, going down at the center front and back. That's the lower band around the neckline.
To the right above, you see that lower band embellished with small pieces of the feature fabrics described above.
Below, you see where I stopped yesterday - the bottom half is totally the bottom half of that chenille striped sweater. I thought I was creating a jacket with a LONG bottom half. Hmmmm - totally FRUMPY! Proportions are all wrong - as the right hand of this shows. Raising it up - AHhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! And what a good example for the principle I teach of proportion. Read all about it in my books on CD and DVD, and in my patterns. Today - I plan to finish this jacket and get on with yet another one.
I'm all set up in basement (messy, yet creative) space to create, stitch, and then hop over to my laptop set up on my old ironing board with stool, to type the 'guts' of this new pattern. THIS is my 'heaven on earth' - second only to spending time with my family - most especially these days with 2.5+ year old grandson Cole - reading to him. I promise some pictures soon....

God's miracle - RAIN!

In my quiet time with the Lord this morning, I read - again - John Piper's meditation in Taste and See on the grandness of God in considering such a thing as rain. I quote (though I'm paraphrasing) from him some facts that I'm sure you'll find interesting to ponder:
" 1. Consider yourself a farmer in the Near East - far from any lake or stream - dependent on water for family and animals - to exist. You have a few wells, but they are dried up. You need water - but where is it to come from? The Sky.
2. How does water then get carried in the sky from the Mediterranean Sea several hundred miles? Carried? How much does it weigh? If one inch of rain falls on one square mile of farmland during the night, that woudl be 2,323,200 cubic feet of water. Equals 17,377,536 gallons = 144,735,360 pounds of water.
3. That's heavy. So how does it get up in the sky and stay there? Evaporation. What's that? It means that the water stops being water for a while so it can go up and not down. How does it get down? Condensation. The water starts becoming water again by gathering around little dust particles betweeh .00001 and .0001 cm wide. That's small.
4. What about salt? Mediterranean sea water is saltwater. Salt kills crops. It has to be taken out. So the sky picks up millions of pounds of water from the sea, takes out the salt, and carries the water (in whatever state - I'm confused!) for 300 miles and dumps it as water again on this guys' farm.
5. Dump it? If it dumped millions of pounds of water on the farm the wheat would be crushed. So - the sky dribbles the millions of pounds of water down in little drops. The drops have to be BIG enough to fall for one mile without evaporating, and small enoughto keep from crushing the wheat stalks. Ohhhh.
6. How do all these microscopic specks of water that weigh millions of pounds get heavy enough to fall? Coalescence. - Meaning the specks of water start bumping into each other and join up and get bigger and when they are big enough, the fall. AND, not exactly just fall cause they would just bounce off each other instead of joining up if there were no electric field present. What? Never mind...take my word for it. "

John Piper suggests that we just take God's word for it - as found in Job 5: 8-10. "God gives rain on the earth, and sends water on the fields."

I agree with Job - only a mighty, mighty God could do all that - and what amazes me personally is that He continues to do this for a people he created to love Him - and so very few do. I do, love Him I mean, and I'm glad. It's raining today - and I will appreciate the miracle God gives..............