It's raining today, proper autumn rain, and therefore I can't shift any more boxes of stuff.  I had a clear conscience about spending the afternoon in the sewing room, where I managed to finish the Stack&Whack quilt. It's a lousy photo, but there was no natural light and the fluoro light was pretty pitiful.

  I love it, it's so pretty and intruiging with all the different patterns swirling through it.  It was a fun quilt to make, I'm very glad I bought that material in both sizes.

I found the book that the new madder quilt came from, and the original pattern was called Road to California.

I've cut a whole heap of strips for the blocks, but I haven't tried to match any of them up for individual blocks yet.  There are so many parts to this block, I'll be able to sew the 4 and 9 patches for ages before I have to make any more decisions.  I'm looking forward to these, but there are other things to do first.

I unfolded one piece of treasured fabric to find a fade line on it. 

It's about 12 years old, so it's been in the stash for a long while, but it's still disappointing to find that materials deteriorate like that.  I've used it in countless quilts over the years, so I suppose they will all end up fading too. It didn't stop me using it in this quilt though, I just cut around the fade mark.  One of the things I love about old quilts is the unpredictable way the colours have changed, so I'll trust that my quilts will end up being charmingly faded, not dreary and washed out.

The dogs don't have much logic to the way they think.  In their minds, the cure for boredom is going for a walk.  They've been lying around all day, eyeing the wet weather outside and sighing dramatically.  Then one of them will bounce up to me 'I'm bored with all this rain.  Can we go for a walk???' When we get to the door they stop and turn to me 'It's RAINING!!  I'm not going out in that...'  Five minutes later, 'Can we go for a walk??'  It's going to be a long night.