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.

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 I have the Drab blocks in one piece, with the leftover strips used as piano key borders top and bottom.  It doesn't look too bad, but I still think the best thing to say about it is that it won't show the dirt, being so dingy already.  Hilary was right to say in the comments that it would be a good 'bloke' quilt, so I think it will get quilted and donated.

I quilted a second donation quilt today, but don't have a photo yet.  A friend made three tops and we're quilting and binding them, and then we'll move on to the stack of tops we've made.

This one was done yesterday, and it too will be good for a guy. It feels great to be getting quilts done and ready to donate; we've been so busy that there just wasn't time to tackle them.

 It's easier for me to stay at Mereth's place while I'm looking after both dogs, so I've taken over her sewing room.

She will have a fit at the messy photo, but I'll clean it up before she gets back.  I'm cutting up the Antique Fair jellyroll, and playing about with different blocks.  I think I'll have to add in fabrics from the stash, I don't like working entirely within a range; it's just too limiting.  These are lovely fabrics, and I want to combine them with other favourites.

  I lent Mereth my little Canon camera, which means I have to lug about my big Nikon, and try to remember how to take decent photos.  It's far superior to the point-and-shoot one, so I should get serious about using it all the time.  Every evening on our walks the sky and clouds are glorious, and the little camera is hopeless at capturing the display.  Hopefully the big camera will do a better job, once I figure out how to work it.

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We're having a long, long, long weekend here in Australia, 5 days off because of Easter and Anzac day.  Mereth took advantage of the time off to go to Newcastle to see her No2 son and his family.  I'm sure she is cuddling little Logan right this moment, lucky thing.

We drove down to Adelaide yesterday to stay the night with No1 son, and we managed to fit in a trip to a little Indian grocery that we've been to before, where we stocked up on a few necessities, like Indian snack food, prepackaged meals, bulk spices and curry paste. 

 I just love wandering through the aisles looking at all the foods that are so different to ours, with strange packaging and exotic ingredients.  It was a fun way to spend an hour.  Then this morning I dropped Mereth at the airport at 5am and drove home through light rain and lines of holiday traffic.  A lot of people were getting an early start, and I felt envious to see convoys of 4-wheel drives lined up at the side of  the road, mysterious and important in the pre-dawn light, drivers congregating to chat and share coffee.  It would be so fun to be setting off with a group of friends for a camping adventure, but I have duties here.

As soon as I arrived home I set Millhouse to stitching on a donation quilt, and went and picked up the dogs.  I have instructions to give Pippi lots of cuddles while her Mum is away, but Dolly doesn't approve of that.  Little bit of sibling rivalry happening I think.

My plans for the rest of the day are to keep working on the donation quilts in the background, while I sew my Drab blocks together.

Mereth said she was sick of them on my design wall, she lost the will to live everytime she caught sight of them.  They are a bit depressing, so I'll get them in one piece pronto and move on to something more cheerful and pretty.

Right after I give Pippi a cuddle....

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My design wall is in utter chaos today.  One minute I'm working on the last of the framed cross blocks ( must find out their real name) and the next thing I know there are four new blocks pinned up there, waiting to become new projects. 

I was hoping to rationalise my sewing room, but I think I've actually tipped it over the edge into outright bedlam.

I may have to put these blocks aside until I can decide which way to set them; I like both ways, and I have enough to do either.  I just can't choose right now.  Hence the need for a new project. 

I will have to sit down with a cup of coffee and write a list of all the new blocks, their sizes and colour schemes and what I want to do with them, or I'll forget by tomorrow.  At least if I've jotted down a few notes it will jog my memory, hopefully.  Future Self will be most grateful.

My idea while I was cutting these blocks was that I wanted to be able to clear out the strip drawers, starting with the 2.5" ones, seeing as there are 4 of them.  One is enough, I don't know how I managed to accumulate enough strips for four.  An added bonus is that I can use jellyrolls too, and I have four of them somehow.  Don't know how that happened, but they need to be dealt with. 

I made three cross blocks to see which proprtions I liked best; the middle size won, and the other two will go into the Orphan stash.  All the cross blocks use 2.5"strips, so I can just cut a heap of the rectangles and put them aside for these blocks.

I love the stripe from the Civil War Reunion collection  in this block; it's a great way to use stripes to give the effect of more complex piecing.  That little idea will go into the files for later use. Ignore that tiny cross block, it was just an experiment.

These big blocks are using up a pile of terribly dull FQs that I weeded out of the stash ages ago.  I was going to just make a backing, but I thought I'd see what sort of a quilt they made; if it's too ugly it will be a backing anyway.  I like all these fabrics, but they are just dreary when put with anything else.  They can all be  dreary together here.

These little blocks form a cute plaid arrangement, and they're so simple to make.  They will use up a pile of 3.5" squares that were leftover from other projects, and be a useful leader-ender.  I'll be making heaps of these.


To make matters worse, there are lots of boxes of fourpatches and strip-pieced scraps, and leftovers from various charity quilts that I don't want anymore.  I don't have unlimited space in my sewing room, so I need to cut down the amount of things I store in here, and only have things that are current and useful.  Everything else can go into storage out the back.



I want to make a list of all the size strips and patches I consistently use, and what I use them for, and eliminate the rest that are odd sizes or that I'm not likely to use up soon.  I'll cut them into other sizes, for projects that I'm working on, and get rid of them that way.

Once upon a time, when I was much younger, I could keep all the varied threads of life in my head and not get muddled, or confused, or lost, or late.  But now, inside my head is like a shambolic, overcrowded, bent-out-of-shape filing cabinet.  I should be able to remember where I filed important information, but I can't.  Not on demand, anyway; I might come up with the goods at 2am when it's too late, but that is part of the problem, not the solution.

I know that from now on I will have to keep notes and records to trigger my memory, if I want to avoid total chaos.  It's just that I like working the way I used to, and it will take a while to put the new paper-trail method of organising into practise.  But the blog can be really helpful, if I can just find the time to post more often. 

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 It's a beautiful autumn day today, and all I can hear is birds singing in the early morning sunshine.  Sundays are so quiet here, not like when I lived on the main street.  Everyone popped into the supermarket next door, so there were traffic noises and  chatter. I didn't mind, but I love the peace and bird songs here.  My neighbour has lots of aviaries, and those bird voices are especially lovely.

There has been time for nothing else except work lately, and I'm so weary of it all.  I would love to jump in the car and go visit friends in Sydney, but that won't happen for a while.  So I'll make the most of my Sunday, and try not to do anything work related.  It's so easy to just open a file to check something, and then three hours go by and I feel hard done by because it's turned into another work day.  So after I hit Publish, I'm going to plant my seedlings and then make bread, and maybe have a cup of tea in the garden. 

 I stayed up late last night sewing, so there is a bit of progress on this set of cross blocks, but I'm not feeling drawn to finish them into a top.  They aren't inspiring me yet, so I'll pack them back in the drawer and let them mature a while longer, like cheese.  Then maybe that cheddar sashing will seem like a good idea...

I'm having fun with these cross in a frame blocks, cut from scraps as well as the Civil War Reunion jellyroll I bought.  I have the absolute perfect setting fabric, just have to decide on a layout.  Onpoint with alternate squares is looking good, but I also like it set straight with alternate blocks.  I'll make the final call after I have a heap more blocks finished.

 In my other house I could sew while my machines were printing orders, but the sewing room is nowhere near the office here.  So while I'm babysitting the printers I practice my recorder.  The acoustics in the hall are great; I can play as loud as I like and it can't be heard outside, which is reassuring when I don't quite hit the note, which is often.  Poor Mereth and Dolly still hate it, but it keeps me amused.   And I think it's beneficial to learn a new skill every now and then, keeps the brain cells active.  Or tortured, or something.

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Every now and then I get the urge to make crumb blocks, and I cover every surface of the sewing room with little strings and snippets and scraps.  I sew together all the little shreds that I've saved in various containers, and I'm happy, happy, happy.

Blocks start to materialise on the design wall.  I love the way the tiny pieces look next to each other.  I plan to make lots of crumb quilts, and to keep sewing until all the containers are empty.

Then suddenly there are no more nice pieces to sew; everything left in the boxes is dull, the wrong shape, the wrong colour, not big enough.  I get grumpier and more disillusioned.  I hate crumb piecing.

It's harder and harder to finish a block.  I just don't have the  right size or colour strips.  I start putting bits in the bin, instead of trying to fit them into the jigsaw of my blocks.  I HATE all the mess!!

At that point it's time to pack it all away and let it sit in the cupboard for a while.  I know that I will accumulate another pile of interesting scraps, and then I'll be able to finish the blocks I started, and make a whole new stack of them.  You can't rush crumb piecing, it's a progression, not a straightforward process.  My quilt will be all the more interesting if I take longer to make it.  It's definitely not a quilt-in-a-day.

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Autumn weather has arrived, for which we are very grateful.  It's cool and rainy and grey today, perfect for quilting and messing about in the sewing room.  Which is what I am doing.Yesterday we shifted all Mereth's potplants from our brother's place to hers, so today is a day to take it easy.  Some of those potplants weigh a lot!
I hope to get some quilting done later on.  The dogs like to dig around in the quilts that are protecting the lounge, and end up sitting on the lounge fabric with the quilts all rucked up beside them.  I want to make a BIG cover for the lounge out of these old twill pieces, something that can be tied in place.  It won't be pretty, but it should keep all the pawprints off the furniture.

That's Dolly's inscrutable camera face there; one moment she's looking at me, all eager and happy, tail thumping and ears pricked.  As soon as she sees the camera she freezes and looks away; too many flash photos have made her wary.  I've only ever accidentally 'flashed' her, but she doesn't forget things like that.

My Square In A Square quilt is finished.  It wouldn't have a pieced border, even though I tried to give it one.  I left everything pinned up on the design wall all week, and it just kept saying NO.  So I went with simple, and I like it like that.  The green toile is really old, a backing length from the stash,and a much prettier colour than the washed out photo. I love being able to find what I need in the stash; even when I think there's nothing that will do, I can usually dig up something.

So I get to cross another UFO off the list, and choose the next one to work on.  I like seeing an empty box and a finished quilt, it inspires me to keep working on these older projects.

Have you read this post on Bonny's blog?....
I think most of us serious quilters, at some time or another, have  felt overwhelmed by our fabric and books and projects and finished quilts.  It can be paralysing to think 'What do I need another quilt for?', and so you don't start another project, or even finish an old one.  The thing that  keeps me sewing is knowing, from past experience, that I always feel better after a sewing session.  It puts my world to rights, when I sit at the sewing machine and feed the little pieces through, and build them into a useful product.  There is always a place for a quilt, but it may involve being selfless enough to give it away.  The collection of quilts for Japan, and for the flood victims in Australia, is a wonderful way to reach out and touch people who's lives have been shaken into a new and terrible pattern.  I love having spare quilts to give away at times like this; no need to start sewing from scratch, I can just pull something suitable from the shelf and it's ready to go to a person who needs it.

If I get overwhelmed by my stash I put some of it on Ebay, or give it away.  When I sell the vintage fabric in my collection it's always for more than I paid, so that offsets part of the loss I make on the modern fabric.  I feel better for having lightened the stash, and I get something back, even if it's not the full price.  And it's a warning to me, when I want to buy more fabric online -  I don't want to be selling a 'must-have' fabric for cents on the dollar in a few years time.  I have had some wonderful emails from the people who buy my fabric, thanking me for making vintage fabric available to them, or for pricing new fabric so that it's affordable for them.

If buying fabric is a form of self-medication then you have to look at it like any medication.  It does it's job at the time.  There's no refund on a bottle of pills, no selling it on to get your money back.  I think getting 'a  fair price' for stash just doesn't happen.  Getting the money back shouldn't be the concern; getting your life in control is more important.


My sewing stuff is my comfort, my past-time, my medicine, my connection to my ancestors and to so many other women who also love the same things I do.  I could never contemplate getting rid of it all.  But I've learned to stop the impulse buying, and to appreciate what I have as an asset, and that is so much better than living with guilt because I've blown the budget, again, on something I really didn't need to have.

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We have a 3-day weekend here in South Australia (Adelaide Cup day - who needs a holiday for a horse race???) and I intend to make the most of my time off.  I want to get the UFO blocks set together, and the pieced borders done.  I'm pretty sure that I have nothing suitable for a final border, so it may get put back in the cupboard until I can go shopping at a real live shop.

I found a suitable green fabric in the stash, a bit lighter and a lot brighter than the other green.  In every spare moment this week I cut and sewed blue and green fabric together, and I'm now up to this stage.

I have a few more units to sew, and then I can start sewing rows.  The squares in the pieced border have been my leader-enders, so I have a stockpile of those already.  I'm a bit worried that I'll run out of blue fabric, but I'll deal with that problem when/if it happens.  I'm all about the sewing right now.

I still haven't decided on a spacer border to separate the body of the quilt and the pieced border.  Every time I walk past the design wall I hang up a different coloured strip, to see what takes my fancy.  Haven't chanced upon the right one yet, but I'll keep working on that while I put all the pieces together.  It makes good sense to me to let my subconcious deal with that problem while I'm feeding more pieces through the sewing machine; most times the solution will occur to me without a lot of concious effort, and that's always a bonus.

It's a lovely autumn day, a little bit cloudy and not too warm, so I hope to get into the garden later on, and take the dogs for a walk too.  And make some soup, and cook a chicken curry for tonight, and sort through my knitting supplies, and tidy up the kitchen cupboards, and .......

That's a good list of things to concentrate on for today; tomorow there will be a whole new lot of priorities, and then there's still another free day after that. I love long weekends!

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Alas, not much sewing was achieved over the weekend but I did get other things done so I can't complain.  I had a scrabble around in the UFO boxes, and pulled out these paper pieced Square in Square blocks, and decided they needed to be finished.

They are about 7 years old, and it's high time I dealt with them.  I love the strange navy prints in the blocks, but I only ever had a few FQs, so it can't be a big quilt. I have 18 blocks made, and it will have to be enough.  It took me two and a half hours to take all the paper out, so the idea of making any more with that method doesn't thrill me.

I had a quick play in EQ7, and I think I'll be going with this idea.

I'll make a few of the setting triangles to see if I like how they look in reality, and I'll try and find a suitable green for the sashing in the stash, but.....  I don't think there's anything there.   I made a trial of the triple sashing with something I thought might work, but it's too strong a colour.  Need more greens!  I may have to go shopping.

The other day we were driving out to visit Mereth's DS at Bowmans Park and saw this fellow walking down the road ahead.

He made a quick skedaddle up the nearest tree, and then froze, obviously thinking his camouflage was pretty good.  Shame his stripes are running the wrong way while he's upright on the tree, he's designed to blend into the twigs and dappled light of the ground under the gum trees.  He's a Lace Monitor, and his spots and dots and stripes are just gorgeous.

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I seem to have no spare time lately, so there hasn't been much sewing happening.  Yesterday I was working on loading things onto my site, but the connection was so slow I gave up and sewed these UFO blocks together.  It was supposed to be a single bed size, but it kept asking to be bigger, so I made another 15 blocks.  It's wonderful to see something come together so quickly, and with no effort on my part.  Squares and rectangles are a delight after hundreds of itty-bitty triangles.

I made these blocks from 2 very old charm packs, and used nearly all them.  I had to add in some light strips from my stash, which helped the colours look a little less drab.  I don't know why I ever bought these cahrm packs in such drab country colours, they are so not my usual choice.  But the gold/brown setting fabric makes them look a lot better.

I'm mulling over ideas for a border; something quick, as this is supposed to be a donation quilt.  I'm thinking a simple triple border would be best, but no fabrics are springing to mind.  I haven't got time to rummage through the stash drawers;  I'll probably grab the first red or brown print that I see and throw it together.  This isn't how I like to sew, but I don't have a choice right now.  I need more time in the day.

I'm already trying to decide what the next UFO project should be.  I need to pull out an old project, something over the 5 year mark.  That's a long time to store a pile of blocks and fabrics, and it would be great to see some of them completed at last.  It's years since my last big clean out, so I'll have to get ruthless.  This weekend should be a good time to give all the project boxes a good shake-up!

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It's finished!!!  I am reeaally happy with how this turned out, it looks much better than I thought it would.  It started as a project to use up material I had lying around in scrap drawers, not all of it lovely; many times as I pieced the blocks I shook my head over the fabrics and colours and thought it was dreary.  But now, looking at it pinned up on my design wall in the early morning sunshine, I'm thrilled with how it turned out.  It looks antique, and interesting and the triangles are soothing and rhythmic.  Looks like I'm in love with the triangles again.

I've cleaned up all the fabric scraps from this quilt, and organised the remainder of the 1.5"strips that were still littering the sewing room.  I have a clear space to work when I start the next project, but for now I'm off to putter around in the garden.  Time for some fresh air and inspiration from my flowers.

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Thank heavens for DVDs is all I can say.  I'm making great progress on my Lady of the Lake, but only because  a dozen Seinfeld episodes have kept me entertained while I sew triangles.  And more triangles.  And More triangles.

 This quilt is all triangles, and nothing but.  I'm not tired of them yet, but they demand a bit more concentration than my normal sewing.

And then it's a bit nerve-wracking putting the blocks together and hoping that all those points match. Most of them are not too bad, but not perfect either.  Perfect is over-rated.  It will take another long session tonight, but I think I can get it finished before I go to bed.

I dealt with another UFO and forgot to mention it.  I pieced together all the bits I had cut out for this quilt, and now it's squared up and ready to be the centre of an orphan medallion.

I don't like the hexagon shape enough to make a whole quilt from it, and I'd rather do the original pattern in my beautiful reproductions that just weren't available all those years ago.  This isn't a finished UFO, but it can wait quietly in the Orphan box until I decide what to do with it.

I discovered this pile of blocks that I made from charm squares and never really felt enthusastic about.  I'm going to set them with that tan fabric and donate the top.  And there won't be any fancy piecing and triangles either; it's going to be a good, honest, plain quilt with big easy shapes.  Maybe I am a bit scarred by all the tiny triangles after all.

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The promised rain arrived, to the delight of Pippi and Dolly.  We had two wet and muddy dogs to deal with after they ran through the garden like mad things in the rain.  We made them sit outside the front door while we armed ourselves with old towels.  Then we let them in and grabbed them straight away, to be carted off to the bathroom and cleaned up.  It's like having little kids again.  They are so funny to watch though, it's better than TV.

I'm making a serious attempt to pare down my UFOs, and tackled the Lady of the Lake blocks today.  It's pictured in this post on point, and much as I love that setting it just wasn't working with these colours.  As soon as I laid the blocks out in a straight set I felt more enthusiastic about the project, which is good.  I made 14 blocks today, and I think another 6 will see it finished.  Then I'll have a think about the borders; I'm thinking something pieced would be fun, and I may have a play with EQ7 tonight.  Or I may go lo-tech with the pencil and graph paper.  It will be good to see this in one piece, and to get rid of all the various bits of material that were earmarked for it.  Some leftovers will go back in to the stash drawers, but most will be cut up or gifted to the Flood Appeal.  One way or another I want these fabrics dealt with.

I'm so surprised to see that I started these blocks in January last year.  I thought they were from August, or maybe July.  The blog is a great way to keep track of things; I often forget to update my spreadsheets with the latest projects, but so long as I blog about them there is a record to refer to.

The next UFO on the list is these scrappy blocks;  they've been littering my sewing room for months on end, so it's about time I did something with them.  I'm so glad there's another  whole day tomorrow to work in my sewing room.

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Those donation blocks I showed are made entirely from 4.5 x 2.5" rectangles, and they are so simple to put together.

We made a heap of blocks from this size rectangle when we were making quilts for bushfire survivors, in 2009; if you click on the'bushfire quilts' label in the list on the right hand side of the blog you'll find a heap of posts about those quilts.

For details of this paticular block you can go to this post;  I love how easy these are to sew, and there are no places where seams have to match, except the actualintersections of the blocks.

That's sort of magical in my book; it takes all the stress out of sewing the pieces together.  I used to make my students sew a couple of these every lesson, and we got a few donation quilts made that way.  The pattern is very forgiving, and even the absolute beginners had no trouble with it.

We're supposed to get a cool change tonight, and rain.  It would be so lovely to have a break in the muggy weather, I'm sure I'd get  more sewing done if the temperature was more comfortable.  Maybe this weekend I'll be able to tackle some of the ancient UFOs....

However, if I keep buying new fabric, and planning new projects, how will I ever have time to finish the old ones? 

I need to stop finding gorgeous fabric that I 'have' to have. (Wild Rose, by Blackbird Designs)

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I'm having one of those weeks where there is too much to do, not enough time, and nothing co-operates.  Yesterday I was all set to  do some more work on setting up my new website, only to discover that my little mobile internet stick had been left at my brother's place, and I was too peeved to get in the car and go and get it.  So I finished the donation quilt on the design wall instead.  It didn't take too long, and I'm very glad to have one thing crossed off the To-Do list.

I rummaged and found border materials that would work, then cut the small borders 1.5", and the large borders 5.5".  By using those measurements I can use the leftovers for another quilt in this pattern; the small strip leftovers will make more sashing and four-patches, and the 5.5" leftovers will make more strip pieced squares.  How's that for planning ahead?

I was too lazy to add the small borders separately, so I sewed them together and then joined them to the quilt.  I don't mind the way this corner looks, but it's not what I wanted for this particular quilt.  I didn't want that light fabric touching the outer border.

I decided to add a 3.5" flippy triangle corner, and that way the brown is at the outer edge all the way round.  What an easy fix and it looks like it's a lot harder to do than it is.  I'm all for looking clever, even when I'm just being lazy.

You can see what I've done, because of the stripes not meeting, but in a printed fabric this would be  a lot less noticeable; I'm going to put this little trick in the arsenal of border treatments.

Amazingly, no one pointed out to me the mistake in my previous picture of this quilt;

look at that bottom right corner!  Was everyone too nice to mention that I had a couple of strips in wrong way round?  I was full of bravado about leaving it there, and then I thought that I might as well unpick it and fix it before it was too late.  So in the final quilt that particular mistake is not there; if something else is wrong, bad luck.  Too late now.

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My sewing room is still covered in 1.5" strips, sewn together in various combinations and waiting to be assembled into blocks.  I'm tired of them now, but I want to deal with them once and for all.  No way I want to open a drawer three months from now and see this lot waiting for me.  So I'm plodding away, and hopefully tomorrow will see the last of them.





As a bit of fun I cut up some charm packs of Park Avenue that I collected when  Hancocks sold them for $3 each. 

I also have a jellyroll of these, so quite enough fabric to play with. 

I'm making the blocks up as I go, just seeing what I like.  I started off with the pale blue units, as the fabric was too lovely to cut into little pieces; these units show off  the large print fabric very well.

I made the little 3" ninepatches in the middle just for fun, and framed them with .5"strips so that they'd fit as the centre of the block.  I like the little touches of red, I think I want the quilt to be mainly blue and brown, with red as the accent.



I'm pretty sure I won't be able to make these blocks just from the Park Avenue range.  There are so many other fabrics in my stash that would look good in these blocks, and I'll have fun combining them all.



In my fossicking I found this set of blocks, destined to be a donation top from two years ago. 

I counted them up, and there's already 65 made; instead of putting them together myself I'm going to send them off to some ladies making quilts for people affected by the Victorian floods.  There are a few other sets of blocks and pieces that I'll be glad to donate; the volunteers will welcome them, and I'll be clearing out my sewing room and creating more space.  And ultimately somebody who deserves it will receive a quilt.

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