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!

To Err is Human....

Thanks to everyone who wished me well after my bout with bronchitis! I'm much better, these four days (and a z-pack, thank the Lord!) later, but still coughing with Poise, if you catch my drift! LOL

Yesterday was my birthday!  Like my mother before me, I've started calling myself old before my time....I was born the year before Kennedy was shot, if that's any reference for you :-D, so I'm not technically old, but there are some days I sure feel it!  I started worrying about myself for sure earlier today!

I got in the mail (on my birthday, how cool is that!! :-D) fabric for the1st of a block-of-the-month I enrolled in a while back, so I thought I would indulge myself and just do that one little block (it's not really like starting anything new!! It's not like I can finish it because I don't have the rest of the fabric!!).

It's the cutest quilt! I love the designer and her quilts -- so darling, and such cool use of muted colors and primitive touches...just what a dark old bird like me enjoys!  I hadn't gotten very far into the pattern, though, when things were NOT going together like they should.

Did I read the pattern wrong? Did I cut something wonky?  Is it the first stages of Alzheimer's? How old am I?  What year is it!!!!???

No....I started going over the numbers, and there was no way mathematically the block was going together like it said.  So out came the seam ripper and thread started flying and I started fuming!  (All that self examination took its toll on my psyche!!)

I turned to the computer and started looking up contact information and composing a "strongly worded letter" (that's what Leo Decaprio says he's going to do when he's drowning in the North Atlantic in Titanic!  It always cracks me up! so I'm laughing out loud while I'm crying and croaking, "Live, Rose! Live!!!" Sheesh!!!).

I've done that before, you know.  A few years ago I did the Victory Quilt from Quilt in a Day and couldn't get my Nosegay block to go together.  I fired off a scorching missive to QinaD -- only to discover that I'd cut my template out wrong.  Can't you just imagine them....?

"Hey, Ellie!! We got another one here who thinks she's smarter than you!!!"
"Wonder how long she's been quilting?"
"Who's she think she is!?!"
"Moron!!!"

This time, though, the pattern really is wrong.  So I ran the numbers (a simple 4", 8" and 12" progression), and reassembled the block, step by step:

And Voila!! the block becomes all it's meant to be!! Happy birthday to me!! :-)

More often than not, though, the problem is with me and not the designer!

When I (as my mother used to call it) "act ugly" -- when I don't act the way I should, I wanna say, "Oh, God knows I'm like this.  He made me this way.  It's not my fault!"  As if He is to blame for my impulse control, or my quick, sharp tongue or my general sour demeanor that day. My first instinct is to blame the Designer. 

No, better to take a look to see if I -- yes, I! :-D -- have done something wrong.  When it comes to my Designer, yeah...it's me, it's me, it's me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer, as the old children's Sunday School song says.  Thankfully, Jesus doesn't want to hold stupidity or perfidy against me.  John the Beloved tells us, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."  (I John 1:9)

I like how the Amplified Version expounds...."He is faithful and just (true to his own nature and promises) and will forgive our sins [dismiss our lawlessness] and [continuously] cleanse us from all unrighteousness [everything not in conformity to His will in purpose, thought, and action]."  Whew!! That covers a whole lotta ground!!  Better to 'fess up and let Him put me back together, conforming me to His perfect image. So I can become all I am meant to be, more's the praise!

So no strongly worded letter, I think. :-)
I sure hope Ellie forgave me for being a moron! :-)
And I will certainly forgive the designer her error.  To err is human; to forgive divine.
Besides, it's too cool a quilt to give up on!!
I can't wait for next month (when I won't be starting another quilt all over again)!

Blessings,

Quilts are a many splendid thing...

Polly Taylor, a wonderful quilt teacher from Jonesborough, TN, visited our guild last week, and we enjoyed doing the splendid "Twice as Nice" Quilt-in-a-Day pattern with her.  The pattern had something for everyone -- easy enough for the beginner, fun enough for old hats like me and some of the other gals! :-D

What amazed me is how different all our tastes were!  As we finished the first of the three blocks the pattern makes out of a strip set of 3 fabrics, Polly displayed them on the board for everyone to see:

It was a day of  experimentation for me.  I used some fabric that all my quilt buddies universally agreed isn't "me."  In fact, I'd submitted several class options for consideration of the Jabez Quilt Conference (coming up in January 2011, check http://ces.ca.uky.edu/rockcastle/ for updated information in the coming months), and the director of the program called me up and asked me if all my quilts were brown!!! (Well, in my defense, brown IS the new black, right!?!)  

I tend to favor a darker, muted color palette! Give me civil war repros and Thimbleberries and Kansas Troubles!  So using the Folklorique line from In the Beginning fabrics, was a REAL departure for me.

I'm thinking the blocks turned out pretty well! In addition to the two blocks pictured, there were also about 12 nine-patch blocks -- all these from 36--2 1/2" strips!  The Folklorique line also had a fabulous folk-art border print that I may use between rows....I'm still deliberating and experimenting on the design wall.

Whoa! COLOR! The brights sang to me! :-)

We had everything represented in the class.... My brights, some Thimbleberries, batiks, civil war repros, '30's repros, fun Moda lines and people using up their scraps. All different and beautiful and inspiring.

It reminded me of a verse I read in 1 Corinthians 15:41.  Paul is talking about the resurrection, and the difference between our mortal and immortal bodies.  As he's explaining the difference, he uses a celestial analogy that expresses perfectly the differences between quilts! :-) 

"The sun," he says, "has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor."

Is that cool or what!!?! My star isn't meant to shine like everybody else's! My star has its own glory, its own splendor, its own beauty.  That's why my quilts don't look like yours.  Your quilts don't look like Suzy Q. Quilter's down the street.  All the quilts we view in Paducah and Podunk and everywhere in between are not for comparison, since they all have their own kind of splendor!  They are our inspiration as we find our own way to shine in the universe.

And while quilts and their creators may have very little in common, we can be sure that the same Creator made us all, and His is the Spirit in the beauty.  He is the Master of color and design and splendor! 

All that glory and splendor are a direct reflection of Him.  I'm so glad I know Him!!

Do you know Him, too?

Blessings!

Mary Lou