Floral Stacked Stars

 Another long term UFO dealt with, after at least 15 years.  Floral Stacked Star is a quilt top at last.

Yesterday was my first full day of freedom, after my 14 days of isolation.  It felt pretty good to have coffee with friends, and then run away with Mereth to two quilt shops. I was looking for something to use as the border for the stars, and Mereth was just running away.

The first stop was to buy the rest of that madder fabric for the backing.

The second stop was Jamestown, in the middle of a rainstorm.  I was hunting for a green fabric to use as the border, and not having much luck, when Mereth produced the bolt of original green fabric.  

I had no idea it was still there, and I've gone through those shelves of fabric so many times in the last decade. I'm so glad she found it, nothing else was going to be a match, it's a very unusual shade of green.

I also bought new pins.  Excuse me while I have another rant. Mereth bought us both a box of pins last year, and she was sorely disappointed in the quality. I thought she must have just got a bad batch, but last week I finally decided the pin situation was dire enough to open my new ones.   I threw the 15 year old ones in my little waste basket and broke out the new ones. What a joke.  The shafts were so rough they snagged the fabric, if you could actually force the blunt tips through the fabric in the first place. More than half of them were bent, some had the glass heads missing or broken.  And they cost $8.  I don't know where she bought them, but I think I'll be taking them back and complaining. 

I dug all the old pins out of the bin and crawled around the carpet picking up every last one that had dropped to the floor.  15 year old pins were preferable to the new rubbish.

Anyway, at the patchwork shop the owner listened to my rant and then told me to open a packet of pins and see if they were sharp before I bought them, so I did.  And they were.  So I bought a pack for me and one for Mereth.

Maybe these will last for 15 years too.