Isn't Mother's Day wonderful, with all the crysanthemums in the shops? 

I went mad this year, and bought 6 pots of glorious colours.  They are only $3.99, so why wouldn't I?  I also got lots of cut flowers, locally grown, 5 huge bunches for the price of one supermarket arrangement.  My table is full of vases, I admire the flowers every time I walk past.

It's been a quiet weekend, just putting things to rights and trying to make some sort of sense of the stacks of fabric in the sewing room. 

After hours and hours of decisions I'm finally starting to see progress;  even though you might think this is still horribly messy, at least I can see blank spaces on the table so I know I'm getting somewhere.  All my trial blocks and half finished projects have been filed away in drawers, with the cutting instructions and graph paper diagrams; when I pull them out in three months time I should know exactly where to start.

I couldn't understand why I felt so driven to keep cutting projects these last few days, without stopping to sew and actually enjoy myself.  Then I realised why I'm stockpiling; my DD is coming to stay for a few weeks, and my subconcious was obviously in charge, making sure that I will have a heap of piecing that I can just pick up and put down easily.  I'm glad someone is on the ball around here.

Today I want to cut up all my 3.5" strips, so that I can actually get the drawer shut easily.  They will make those simple plaid blocks that were on my design wall a while ago.  Once I've done that, I will have completely emptied my 1.5, 2.5 and 3.5"strip drawers, cutting them into pieces for kits.  Quite an achievement, I feel.  As soon as I sew all those kitted projects together I'll feel even better.

On Friday Mereth and I ran away to a neighbouring town and investigated the Op-shop there.  I found all this vintage ric-rac for 20 cents each, so I bought the oldest ones.  I have no idea what I'll do with it, but I can feel an applique project coming on,  I'll have to preshrink all this, it's pretty poor quality, but at least it's all guaranteed colour fast. 

My design wall is still as haphazard as ever, and I think I've started even more projects.  I need to stop looking at blogs and being inspired by new ideas, and just settle down for some long sewing sessions.  I just can't seem to make myself do that though.

I've been cutting out the simple diagonal blocks in spare moments, and then sewing them together in other odd moments.  They go together so quickly, it takes longer to cut them than to sew them up.  I have a fair idea of what I need to add to this to make it work, so I'll stockpile the pieces and start using them as leader-enders.  Then I can move onto another project with a relatively clear conscience.  I'd like to say I can see a dent in the drawers that all these reproduction fabrics came from, but not a chance.  What I'd like is to be able to fit them all in 3 drawers instead of 4, so I intend to donate a lot to Mereth in a stunning act of goodwill.  The way I see it, it's just passing the problem onto her, so it's not really fair, but she will treasure these far more than me.  I have guilt over having so much, so I'm not really enjoying them as I should.

I fell in love with Lucy's quilt, and gave in to the impulse to make a couple of blocks, just to see how they look together. 

Of course they look good, so now I want to abandon all the other things I'm working on, and pull fabrics for about 63 of these blocks.  I'm fighting the urge to do that, but I can tell it's a losing battle.

The container of 1.5"squares and triangles was providing leader-enders, and I have a few of these little blocks put together.  I have no idea where they're going, but they're cute.  Some idea will come to me once I have a pile of them.

I'm getting more familiar with my big camera, and it really does a good job of capturing the amazing cloudscapes at sunset. It's a pleasure to go walking with such skies overhead.