Hi everyone! It's a hot day and some hot days I like to hear a good story. Here's a God story that I think is a good story.

For years now I have been praying before starting a quilt. I ask God to provide me with the fabric I need right here at home so that I don't have to go out and buy more fabric to finish a quilt. I'm on a strict fabric diet because of finances. He has surprised me many times with borders and backings that are just right from my stash, fabrics I didn't remember having.

I went shopping with a friend, Julie, who is also on a tight budget. She had made a gorgeous Civil War courthouse steps quilt out of ugly fabrics she had found in my stash. What was I even doing with them? I don't know but I was happy to give them away. The quilt she made was, like I said, gorgeous. It just needed border fabric, backing and binding. We went to Marden's where you never know what you're going to find. Before we started to shop I asked if she'd pray about finding the right fabric for her quilt. She looked at me kind of funny and said, "Okay." So we prayed. Then we started going through the store.

I like to start at one end and go through the aisles until we end up at the other end. She protested because the first aisle was all solids and whites, but she followed along anyway. She wanted a blue border with a red binding. We went up one aisle and down another. There was nothing. She had already gone to all the other shops in the area to find what she wanted and could not find it. I tried to convince her to choose another color for her border and binding since there were so many other colors in the quilt. Even conceding the color change there was still nothing for her pretty quilt. We thought we might have to go to Keepsake, where fabrics are over $10 yard and she was very discouraged.

I insisted we continue on until we had gone down every single aisle. "But why are we going down the fleece aisle? What a waste of time!"

"I don't know," I said. "I just like to go down every aisle."

There at the end of the fleece, tucked away in the corner, were four shelves stuffed with fabric, with a sign saying $1 yard. We tore through the bolts and found out why they were priced at only $1. They were all ugly! Just as we were giving up, I found a beautiful blue fabric that I thought would be just right for the quilt border! I even let her "high five" me, which I just do not do. She found another one just like it but a bit grayer, which might go better with her Civil War Era fabrics.

We brought them over to a table to lay the quilt out next to the fabric. I looked at the fabric I had chosen and I felt so let down. It was as sheer as gauze! I would never let her put it into a quilt. We were both so sad about it. I know it's just fabric, but we were so hopeful when we found this stash of inexpensive fabrics. As we were putting the two of them away, I picked up the exact same print from the exact same manufacturer, and it was the nicest fabric you could ever find! It was just the right weight for a cotton fabric and it was just the right color and it was only $1 yard! We had found it! Or, as I believe, God had led us to it. She bought enough for the border and the back and hardly spent any money at all.

But we still didn't have a binding fabric. Then Julie remembered seeing a solid red right at the corner of the very beginning of the aisles, the one she didn't want to go down in the very beginning. There we found it, the perfect red for the binding. We hadn't thought of a solid until we had just about given up hope!

So that's my God story for the day. And there's one more part to it. As I said, I'm trying not to spend any of the money I don't have, hence the praying. When putting together my famous once-ugly homespun quilt, I needed a border. Julie brought over the blue fabric that she had leftover from her quilt and it did not go at all. It was a floral and it did not go with my plaid homespuns. Then, as she was putting it away, she folded it up inside out and said, "Cyndi, look at the back of this fabric!" It was just the right color with just a tiny touch of color from the flowers showing through lightly. Like I said, it was just the right weight for a cotton, and because of the weight it only allowed a little of the color to shine through from the other side. She gave it to me, of course, and now I have a border for my quilt as well! And that's my God story. Thanks for listening!