Every weekend should be five days long.  I'm having a lovely time just pottering in the sewing room and the garden, it would be wonderful if life was like this all the time.  But it's back to work tomorrow, and we'll be running to try and catch up.  But it's totally worth it.

I've quilted all the donation tops that were given to me, just have to bind them sometime during the week.

Check out that vintage print, very nice!

It would have been nice to load one of my personal tops, but Millhouse was busy the whole time.  Maybe next long weekend.  I want to do one of my 'best' quilts, and really do some special quilting, but that will take a lot of time and planning.  It's frustrating to have the machine and not be able to do our own quilts.


I am still working to rationalise my stash; much as I love my Judie Rothermel fabrics that came in the fabric club, I find them overwhelming as a group.  I have four drawers full of them, and I never seem to use them.  It's been three years since I got them, and it's time to start cutting them up.  I devised a couple of projects that use massive amounts of fabric, not just a measly strip or two. I'm cutting a 5.5" and 6.5" strip from a fat quarter, and there's not much left after that, especially if it's been nibbled at already.

I intend to give Mereth the leftovers, which she will be so happy about.  Then whatever is left will go into my regular stash drawers, to be used like normal fabric.  No more "Too good to cut up" rubbish.

The blocks I'm making will end up 5"square, and I'll need well over 100 to make a decent size quilt, which is all good.  I want to have a huge amount of blocks to diffuse the oddity of some of these reproduction prints.  There's no way I would have bought them on their own, they were just part of the collection, and authenticity aside, some are downright ugly.  Hopefully they will get lost amongst the crowd of other prints.

 Yesterday I drove down to Adelaide to pick up Mereth from the aiport, and managed to fit in a little trip to Bunnings, our huge hardware chain.  I adore that place so much, but I never have enough time to go through the whole place, I just run in and grab a few things and race off again.  It's a serious limitation going alone, no-one to help load gear onto the trolley.  I should have bought all the bulky stuff first, loaded it into Wilson and gone back for the fun stuff.  I managed to get some wood and melamine shelving that I needed, plus some plants, so that will keep me happy for a while.

It was fun to have both dogs for the weekend, they had a ball together.  Dolly is still sleeping it off, and enjoying having my undivided attention.  But in about an hour I reckon she'll be up for a visit, and some more fun times.