I had a lovely productive day today, sewing on my quilt blocks. I have all the half-square triangle units done, and the centres pieced. Tomorrow I will start putting the units together into blocks. I have 11 cut out, and once they're finished I will lay out the 22 blocks I've done and see if I need another colour to make it come alive. I'd like to do some red ones too, but I'll wait and see what the overall effect is like. I'm enjoying the blocks so much though, I don't think I'd mind if I made a few extra.

I have the setting squares cut, and some of the setting triangles. The grey fabric I bought on Friday is just perfect, so I need to go back and get another metre. The border fabric is one I"ve been resisting for ages, telling myself I didn't need another black print. But as soon as I thought of using it in this quilt it became acceptable to buy it. I just love the way the triangle fabric and the border look together.

The black setting squares are a fabric I purchased on my honeymoon 20 years ago. We stayed at a little town called Childers, and I wandered into the general store and found this print. It was most unusual to find nice fabric suitable for patchwork back then, and it was only $1.95 a metre, so I bought it all. This is the last of it, but what a significant quilt to use it in; I'll be thinking of lots of things as I quilt this one.

I have a little stash of very precious scraps, some as old as 25 years. I will find them tomorrow and see if I can use any of them in this quilt. They are from the days when Mereth and I used to trek to a neighbouring town to the only patchwork shop in the district, where for 20 cents you could fill a bag from their scrap bin. We treasured every bit of fabric we could find then, and sewed everything by hand. Times have changed.

One piece I'd like to include is a shirting we bought the day before my wedding. We were in Brisbane , and had gone to the city centre to collect a hoop skirt from the wedding shop. It was an essential item, as I was wearing my friend's wedding dress, and she's 6'1". I'm 5', and the dress was lace, so all we could do was run vertical gathering threads at intervals around the hem. That shortened it considerably, but the hoop skirt was needed to lift the dress up to clear the ground.

Of course Mereth and I went to Gardam's , a famous fabric shop, first. We were in heaven, choosing a dozen patchwork fabrics to buy. Then we both realised at the same time that it was 15 minutes till the shops closed, so we had to run all the way to the wedding place to get the hoop skirt, clutching our bags of fabric. But it was worth it.