I spent the weekend working outside, and made a start on my summer vegetable garden; lots of capsicum, tomatoes, chilli and lettuce seedlings planted, and seeds sown for baby spinach, salad greens, beans and zucchini. My hands look dreadful now, with broken fingernails and scratches, and stinging nettle rashes. It will all wear off or grow out, but right now I have hobbit hands. I had planned to bind three quilts, but that hurts my fingers anyway, so I have to let my hands heal a bit before I tackle that job. Binding is tough on the hands.

I did manage to do a bit of sewing in between the outside work. I put these Framed Crosses into a top, which has loads of white space to show up the quilting that I plan for it. As soon as I had the blocks in one piece I decided I needed to remake the quilt with a smaller block, so I drew it up in EQ6 and resized it to 9.5". I will end up with two nearly identical quilts, but there's no way I've had enough of this block after just one quilt. I need to make another 40 or so...

I've been using my 3.5" squares as leader-enders, and the Colonial Squares has grown to this size. I'm probably about 1/3 of the way there, and I'm liking it so far. I'm not in any hurry to finish it, so it's a good project to have as a leader-ender; no temptation to race ahead and work on it exclusively.

I succumbed to another temptation, and added this litte Singer 538 to my collection. I usually sew on my Mum's 201P, and I decided to give it a holiday. It's very precious, full of memories, and I don't want to overwork it, so it will be my paper-piecing machine; I can leave it set up with a small stitch length, and sew regular seams on the 538. Which incidentally does the most awesome 1/4" seam out of any of my machines; my Framed Cross blocks are so perfect it's eerie! I normally don't achieve that degree of perfection without a struggle. I haven't named this machine yet.

Good thing I worked in the garden over the weekend; there's thunder and lightning outside, and rain threatening. It's a day to stay inside and tackle more UFOs. That's no hardship at all.