Blockhead

This time of year my son, Will, is immersed in Charlie Brown world!! He loves all the Peanuts' holiday classics, and he watches them over and over.  While Will watches the dvd's in my sewing room, I've been busy throwing blocks up on the design wall -- trying to make a decision about which UFO is next!!

Judy over at Patchwork Times has issued a UFO Challenge for 2011. And as I try to decide what 12 projects go to the head of the line, I hear echos of Lucy van Pelt in my head:

I think I have an obsession with making blocks.  I store them on skirt hangers and put them on pegs on the wall to keep them in front of me -- seeing them everyday is supposed  to motivate me to take the final step and set them up in a quilt top.  Not my most effective plan to date. Sigh.

Let's see...

There are my Victory Quilt blocks, Quilt in a Day's 1940's sampler. 18 blocks completed in lovely patriotic colors, mostly Thimbleberries fabrics (I thought that would be interesting -- to make a QinaD pattern with TB fabrics :-D).  The pattern calls for sashing and cornerstones and a cool "ribbons" border....I have the fabric. I have the tools.  I've let this thing hang on a peg for two years or more.

There are my Biblical Blocks. A great group of gals and I did these at Paula's Quilting Pantry with a Bible study that corresponded with each block.  We met every other week for several months, then weather and circumstances had me calling a halt to the class.  We finished 19 of the 32 blocks in the book by Rosemary Makhan...and I pulled another ten patterns from other sources (for those who didn't want to attempt the harder blocks) and there are a couple of those hanging on the peg with the others.  Three years....? Maybe more.  It's languished for a while.

There is Hometown Christmas.  It's a little newer on the UFO list -- only 18 months or so.  The pattern is a little older than that, but I collected the fabrics I wanted to use in it over time, and finally started it last year.  I have 9 of the twelve sections completed on it.  The other 3 are cut and ready to sew.  It, like the others, got pushed to the back burner for whatever interesting thing or class idea or deadline took my fancy.

And there are still others on my pegs (and in boxes, and drawers and bags and closets)....

 

Paul writes in Colossians 4:17, "Tell Archippus: 'See to it that you complete the work you have received in the Lord.'" (NIV)

Traditionally, Archippus is thought to have been a pastor at the church in Laodicea -- the one that the Lord said was "neither hot nor cold" (Rev. 3: 15) -- the church that kicked back, was self-satisfied, in need of nothing, whom God challenged, "Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline" (v. 19).

As I look around my sewing room I see that I, too, am "in need of nothing."  It's easy to become a "blockhead," satisfied with the status quo...going along and getting along, while needful things languish like projects on pegs. 

The Lord's admonition to the church at Laodicea is to exchange the illusion of good living for more difficult -- and more lasting! -- things.  "I counsel you," the Lord says, "to buy from me gold refined in the fire so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so that you can cover your shameful nakedness, and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see." (Rev. 3:18 NIV)

I'll be joining Judy's UFO Challenge.  It's too easy to get caught up in the latest excitement and to ignore those things that need our attention, that have been let go for too long.  (And I ain't just talkin' about quilts! :-)  If I complete the work I have received from Him, as he told Archippus to do, I can look forward to the greatest of all compliments to a believer (or a quilter!):

"Well done, good and faithful servant!"

Blessings!