In between building construction activites on the weekend I sat at my sewing machine. And had an attack of rationality. That's when a voice says in your head 'What do you need another quilt for? You should finish what you have started. You should clean up this mess. You should do some work..' It ends with the truly terrifying 'You should get rid of all this stuff!'

Luckily my reaction to the final statement is always to start sewing in defiance. I appeased my conscience by pulling all the doubtful greens out of my three drawers of green fabric, and set to work to cut them into squares for backings. I'm not starting a new quilt, I'm making something useful out of nothing, I'm making more room in my stash drawers, I'm saving money by not buying backings, blah blah blah. (Having fun too)

The only problem was, the box I keep my 10.5" squares in was overflowing, so I made two backings first, a blue one and a pastel one. They both have quilts to belong to, so I felt very virtuous as I refilled the box with green squares.

I have been cutting 10.5" squares for my pieced backings, but a lot of the scraps weren't that big. I've started cuttiing 8.5" squares now, because I can get those out of a skinny quarter, with nothing left over, thank heavens. I'm using up my fabirc at a great rate.


Along the way I played with a new strippy scrappy project I want to do next, and the voice in my head gave up in disgust and went away. Yay! Another small victory for the right-hand side of my brain.

Seeing how blah those backings look I can only be glad that I got those fabrics out of my stash; they wouldn't have enhanced any quilt top that I put them in.

I went to the art shop today to replace my pencil sharpener; I gave Meredith my other one. This is the best sharpener ever. At one quilting workshop the sceptical ladies kept fishing out problem pencils from their sewing kits, but this little beauty put a perfect point on all of them. It has never failed me yet; got to love something that doesn't let you down. It has two different angles that you can put on your pencils, and it's brilliant on those fragile ones.