One of our Christmas traditions is clearing the decks for a jigsaw or two. I have loved puzzles for as long as I can remember, and I have a serious collection of favourites. I have several rules though;

• no modern ones because the digital photos don't enlarge nicely
• only houses, castles and boats - don't know where that one came from
• if possible, only ones with weird interlocking shapes
• nothing over 1000 pieces, as they just take too long, and take up too much space
• nothing with too much sky

So WHY are we doing this monster? It's 3000 pieces, and there must be a thousand sky pieces alone. This is two days of work, to get it to this stage. However, every person who walks in the door is put to work, and they can't leave until they've got two pieces in place. At this rate we estimate it will be finished in December 2008.

Matt was very helpful, and put a lot of pieces together. Unfortunately, none of them were right. Thanks awfully!We have already decided that if we get the landscape done, and we are sick of it, we won't bother with the sky; however, I would love a photo of the thing completed, just to say we did it. Then the whole lot goes back to the op-shop, to inflict this insanity on another unsuspecting family.

Another Christmas tradition is courtesy of our Italian SIL, who every year delivers one of these intruiging boxes. Panettone is an Italian sweet bread full of raisins and citron, and it is so divine. I don't eat bread at all normally, but I make an exception for this. It is best eaten with a cup of brewed coffee; what a combination of flavours!And I have a confession to make. I have been feeling a bit smug, reading the posts detailing unfinished projects on Stashbuster and several blogs. 'Goodness gracious' I thought to myself. I don't have THAT many things started. Enter Reality,with a notebook and a camera and a desire to know exactly what I do have in my cupboards.67.

Well at least 67, because the memory card was full, and it had been a long day, and who really cared what was in that final cupboard, and who's idea was this anyhow!!??

I pulled out a set of blocks that was very near completion, and sewed them together, using a metre of sashing fabric in the process, which caused me great happiness. Then I had the brilliant idea of a pieced border. It does look good, but instead of slapping on a few strips of fabric to finish this I will be sewing 200 Flying Geese units. Some great ideas are just a lot of extra work, grumble grumble grumble. Trouble is, once I see it like that I can't settle for less.

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I've been looking for the right picture to hang in my entrance and on our last trip I found this at a junk shop. I'm not a Roman Catholic, but I love Italian art; now this lovely mother and child are the first thing you see through the open door at my place. Just perfect!

Merry Christmas, and may your holidays be quilty!

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Home again, and ready to stay put for a while. I've certainly put some miles on that car of mine.

Most of the crops along the way have been harvested, and now the fields are full of baled hay. There are a variety of types of bales, but these huge round ones always make me laugh. They look so surreal, like a landscape by Salvador Dali. They are taller than I am, and I would love to see them being stacked and loaded onto the trucks. That's a lot of hay to shift.We took DS to the Birdwood Motor Museum, up in the Adelaide hills, and that was interesting. It was pure co-incidence that a wonderful patchwork shop, the Patchwork Apple, was only minutes away! We ducked in for literally 15 minutes, and grabbed a handful of fabric each. Shirtings! Only two, but 1/2m of each is better than nothing.
The others were remnants, and all very useful prints. I was exceedingly restrained in my purchases, considering the wonderful reproduction fabrics they had. We can go back another time.
I finished quilting another quilt before we went away. This was made from stash, and the pieced strips were whatever was left from a series of quilts I made last year. It looks nice and cheerful and summery, and is on my bed for now; I really am spoilt for choice when it comes to bed quilts.

And since I got home I have finished this top, which was stalled for lack of the border fabric. I picked up the necessary metres on the way home yesterday, and had it in one piece before lunchtime today. It grew to be 84" square, and I didn't mean for it to be that big. I must be stricter in future and refuse to be bullied by my quilts.

I do think the result was worth the long search for just the right border fabric. I love how this turned out, and I'm planning the quilting designs already. I just have to find a backing for it, hopefully from stash; that will earn me a few more metres to buy on my next patchwork shop expedition.

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Oww!! I feel like I've sewn a marathon. I don't know how Bonnie gets all that piecing done in between the other things in her life. It took a concerted effort on my part to get this little lot finally done, and I don't think I managed anything else at all. Can't sew any more..... too tired!

I think I've got over my aversion to little 9-patches, if I had to make another 200 for the border I think I'd just get in there and do it. A seam is a seam, surely, no matter if it's on a four patch or a Le Moyne Star or a nine patch.

I used up all my 1 1/2" strips on the first 100 blocks, so I cut up a lot of smaller pieces to make the rest of the patches. I measured, and there was the equivalent of 8 metres in this drawer; it's all gone now, cut up into projects or strips to restock the scrap drawers, or actually pieced into the Mystery quilt. I've earnt a trip to the patchwork shop I think. I will have to total up what I've bought this week, there was a quick visit to a shop on Monday to get border fabrics, but I think I only got 4 metres, and all in the name of borders. So that's allowable.

Another trip tomorrow, to see family, so no sewing for a while. I'm very glad I managed to complete the third mystery step; when we get back I will have a nice time deciding what to start next.

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What did I say about 9-patches? 80 more on the to-do list now. I think after this lot of blocks I'll either have got over my 9-patch dislike, or I will never make one ever again. Time will tell. Doing these as leader and enders has been quite painless, I think I'm coming to terms with them.

I have been keeping very busy organising the stash and trying to rationalise all my storage. I don't know what is worse, not having enough places to put your things, or not having the time to get everything just the way you want. The lack of storage and space can be dealt with, the lack of time is more difficult. But I've been using up every moment I can setting out the workroom, and I'm beginning to be happy with it. I'm having some work done on the room this weekend, so no photos until that's over.

The Anvil quilt has been stalled for weeks while I try to decide what border to put on it. Finally I think I have decided on this fabric; it keeps a lighter feeling to the quilt, and with all that red it could be too overwhelming, especially as it's destined for a room with red walls. Nice and cosy in winter maybe, but I don't want it to be overpowering. I will breathe a huge sigh of relief when this is in one piece!

Mereth and I have been comparing our attitudes to our stashes over the last few weeks, and I've come to a few conclusions. I am comfortable with the amount of fabric I have, I certainly don't want to whittle it down to a few boxes and drawers. On the other hand, I don't want to have a greater amount than I have, or it will be too difficult to manage. So what I am striving for is Stash Equilibrium. Yardage In = Yardage Out. Simple.

I also want to buy fabric that will fulfill a purpose, not just add to the pretties. I get so stumped when it comes to borders, because I haven't conciously bought lengths for that purpose for a while. I have smaller pieces, or backing lengths, but often there isn't a lot of choice for borders. So I need to ignore all the FQs that call out to me, and go for fabric lengths that will help to finish the projects I have started.

And I need to buy whatever is missing from the Stash; white shirtings for a start! I have drastically reduced those, until I can't even finish the blocks for the blue and white quilt I'm working on. So I can see a foray into an online shop for those sometime soon.

But I need to balance that buying with using up what I have. Last week I made another three backings, one from about 5 strange pieces from the Blue drawer. That felt good. Another backing was a huge green and brown and blue affair, 99" x 110", made from 10.5" squares of unlovely pieces. I thought that little puppy would never be finished, it went on for days! The other backing was a straight 5m from stash, but that brought the total up to around the 14m mark there. In Stash Equilbrium terms, I have earnt myself a 14m shopping spree!

Not content with that, I weeded out 10m of little bits and pieces, and cut it all into bindings, strips, squares and triangles. I sat and watched Mereth deal with her scraps one night, and I was so impressed with how methodically she works through the pile. And horrified! I kept saying, 'Surely you'll have to put THAT in the bin!" and she would smile and pick up a different ruler and cut yet another shape. And finally she would hold up the tiniest shred and triumphantly put it in the bin, with the stacks of cut shapes growing higher and higher. I don't think I'm that dedicated.

And she's taken to going through the bins in the workroom and salvaging my rubbish. I will have to dispose of my scraps more thoroughly, or she'll never get to cut into her good fabric.

I was bad and bought myself a Christmas present on Ebay, all the way from England. It is the most fantastic quilt, I'm thrilled with it. It came from the Allendale area, where Elizabeth Sanderson worked, which makes it more special. Some of the motifs are very unusual, and so individual; I'm sure the quilter had a lot of fun making up the shapes to fill the odd spaces between the large motifs. I could look at it for hours.And then, because my quilts are piling up at an alarming rate, I invested in some shelves. This will be called the padded room from now on. What made my day was realising how many empty shelves there are; all the other side is empty. That gives me permission to make another 40 or 50 quilts, bcause I already have a place to store them.And finally, another machine to add to the collection. I don't even have a reason for this, except that it was only a few dollars and I don't already have one. I was talking to another collector during the week, and she has at least 15 machines on shelves, and more stored elsewhere; I only have 5 old machines and 3 new ones. And a Gammil....It's a 99 I think, doesn't have anything to identify the model. However, it was made in 1948 in Clydebank in Scotland. I'm sure she'll be very happy with my other machines.

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I don't particularly like piecing 9-patches, they bore me for some reason. So it was with nothing like enthusiasm that I saw the next instruction for the Carolina Crossroads mystery was to make 100 of the things.After a mammoth effort I have pieced and cut all the pieces, and now I'll use them as leader-enders in between my other sewing projects. I'm glad to have that chore behind me; it used up the dregs of my 1 1/2" strips, so I will have to cut some more from my stash. I'll weed out all the FQs that have been whittled away, and that will stock the strip drawers as well as make room in the stash drawers. I'm so glad to see the last of some of these little strips, I thought I'd never use them up; they were The Strips That Would Not Die.

Thank heavens Bonnie has gone away for the weekend, and it will be a while before installment three of the mystery!

I sewed together some of the waste triangles from the binding strips, and decided that a Broken Dishes quilt would use them up nicely. Each block takes 16 dark and 16 light triangles, perfect for my leftovers. Every block will use the waste triangles from the bindings of two finished quilts; when I have enough blocks to make a quilt there will be a serious amount of work represented. I tried pressing the seams open, and to one side, and I do think the open seams were nicer. The block went together very easily and it lies flatter than the other. And the back is really neat!
During the week I found time to clean up another garage sale find. It's only silver plate, but it's as heavy as lead, which makes it just perfect as a ruler rack. I love the sun gleaming on it, makes me smile. However, I don't think that I'll be cleaning it too regularly; it's got too many hard to reach places. If I have a spare half an hour I'd rather have coffee and sew than clean silver!

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You know what these are don't you? I succumbed to Bonnie's Carolina Crossroads mystery challenge, and I spent this morning making these rail fence units. We were supposed to make 100, but because I can't count, apparently, there are 130 there. And I do what Bonnie does and pin them together in stacks of 10, because I have a hard enough time keeping track of the numbers anyway, and don't want to have to count them all again.
I can't imagine what I was thinking, I carefully worked out what I would need to get my 100 units, then went ahead and cut twice as much as I needed. Not enough coffee in the system obviously. But now I have a head start on a border for another quilt, or filler blocks for my orphans, or something. The colours are just what was in a massive pile of scraps by my machine, waiting for who-knows-what. I'm using double pinks as my accent, blue and brown for my scraps and cream shirtings for the lights. I love Bonnie's quilts, soI'm trusting that I will love whatever this turns out to be.

This is Binding Mountain.

My latest obsession is turning great swathes of material into neat bundles of bindings. Some of these are for finished quilts, others are for tops that are waiting their turn on the Statler. I cut 8 2.5" binding strips, no matter how big the quilt. Most of my quilts take 7 or 7-and-a -bit strips to bind. Then the extra goes into the scrap binding bin, and for every 6 or 7 finished quilts I get a free binding! They are being stored in my Ikea drawers, which I just love. I will get a few more on my next trip there, I love the compartments and the clear lids. They can be built into a unit, but I have them behind my sewing machine; they are nearly the same height as the plastic extension table around the sewing machine, which is rather handy.

I'm saving the triangles I cut when I do the mitred seams, and they will turn into HSTs one of these days. I try to throw them away, but it's a wicked waste when there are so many of them. I'm sure only day I'll be glad I kept them.

Each binding takes .5m, so there is 4.5m in that lot, plus I've turned 16m from my stash into backings this week. 20m busted! and none acquired (so far). I'm feeling rather please about that. But the backing stash is looking pretty scanty........

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I belong to the Stashbuster group, and though I'm not on No-Buy status I do want to get my stash under control. I need to enjoy having it, instead of feeling overwhelmed and unable to buy the nice new fabrics without lashings of guilt. So that means using up what I have, at least at the same rate as I buy it.

Judy L. has explained how her stash grew.

I can remember when my stash consisted of three fabrics, about 2m total. In 1980 I shared a collection of scraps and dressmaking lengths with Mereth, but when I moved to Queensland to go to college I took none of it with me. On a trip home we cut out this 1000 Pyramids quilt, which I hand-pieced over the next two years. And that was most of our stash gone in that one quilt. It's full of dress-making scraps and bits from relatives and friends, nearly 50 items of clothing that we made. We really did make almost all our own clothing back then. In fact I often had to make a blouse first, so that I could use the scraps, and Mum wouldn't frown at me for wasting fabric on patchwork. This is one of the quilts that I love the most, it has so many memories involved. It's faded and one patch has shredded, but it was the only finished quilt in my life for a long time. It's an old mate.

In my second year of college Mereth and I started swapping 5" Baby Basket blocks (also called Cake Stand I think). Each of these could be cut from a 6" charm square or scrap, and we would make several blocks, then post them to each other. It was always a good day when a fat little envelope was in the mail box. Those blocks in the centre marked the start of Mereth's attitude to piecing; why use the same fabric when you could use more, and why not use even tinier pieces if possible. I was shocked at her daring when I saw those blocks tumble out of the envelope. In 1982 I was staid and conventionalist, very close to Quilt Police status myself.

These little blocks are the beginnings of the serious stash we own today. We repeated very few fabrics, and the aim was to collect as many new prints as possible. We just never stopped, even when the quilts were done. And still not quilted as you can see; the marking pencil ran like a rabbit when something was spilled on the top, and now most of the seams have a black shadow. I'll quilt this on the Statler, and then tackle those stains; it's precious to me no matter how grotty it looks.

Being raised by a champion fabriholic, and coming from a long line of collectors, we never had a chance. In the beginning we were totally indiscriminate; if it was fabric and we could afford it we bought it. I think getting a bargain was sometimes more important than liking the stuff! Later we made better choices and built the stash selectively, but until last year there were things in my cupboards that made me shudder. It was a pleasure to weed them out and get rid of them.

Once I started quilting for a living, and had money to spend legitimately on it, I set about some serious acquisition. I spent four years travelling to dozens of quilt shops to teach, and at each place I built the stash. The material I bought then is probably still the bones of my collection; I bought rationally and with an eye to future quilts and I got a teacher discount on most of it. There's not a lot of it I regret.

What I do regret is all the bargain fabric I squirrelled away and didn't use. Most of it has been disposed of; cut up and sewn into utility quilts, gifted to others, sold or just plan thrown away. I really hope I never buy like that again, it wasn't healthy. I'm not going to give up buying cheap fabric, but I don't want to buy 3 metres of it if the price is the main attraction. I Am Not In The Market For Cheap Fabric! I am after beautiful fabric, full stop.

I think I started to feel a bit ashamed of myself when I'd get to the Spotlight sale at 8am, and by 8.30 I would have purchased all the nice cheap fabric available; anyone who couldn't get there that early would only be getting what I didn't want. But I didn't need any of it either. So I stopped doing that. I might go on the last day of the sale, and that way I consoled myself that

• no-one else wanted it more than me
  
• there must have been plenty for everyone
  
• I was meant to have it anyway.

I did a rough count last year and calculated that I would have about 1200 metres of fabric; that doesn't seem toooo bad, for 30 years of collecting. And I can still stand in my sewing room and complain 'I don't have ANY double pinks!' and almost mean it.

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Another garage sale today, and I picked up this little beauty for $30. It's a treadle in a cabinet, not too bad condition. If the original seamstress hadn't placed her pincushion over the arm of the machine it would be in perfect shape. I wasn't going to buy it, until the vendor suggested I put another pincushion over that spot, and I thought that was a good idea. I want a treadle as a backup for emergencies, and as a piece of furniture, so the damage to the decals is immaterial. The belt is a little too tight for easy treadling, but I will buy a new one on my next trip into town. What a little darling!

I'm a bit peeved that the quilts are coming off the machine so quickly that the next one isn't even ready to load, so I am determined to make up a few backings and cut batting to size and have a stack of tops ready to go at a moments notice. I've run into a problem though; I can't bear to actually use my backing stash. How silly is that? Still, I'm having a huge struggle making up my mind what fabric to use with each top. This bit's too good, this bit's not long enough, this bit isn't nice enough quality, I want that for a future top......

These are shortlisted to go on the back of the patchwork they are laying on. None of them are big enough, so they will have to be pieced together somehow. I love the top, love all the fabrics too; now I just have to get over the feeling that I am 'wasting' them by using them up. I will have a finished quilt, with a back that I love just as much as the front. I need to get over this nonsense and just start using the lengths for what I bought them for. Backings!

I'm making a concerted effort to use up more fabric instead of constantly acquiring more, so I'm cutting hanging sleeves and bindings for every top and project. I'm determined to make space in the stash drawer, so that I can find what I want and put things away easily. I've downsized already, but I'm ready to go even further. It makes it easy when everything I wave in the direction of the bin prompts Mereth to offer 'I'll have that if you don't want it!" I get the feeling that my unwanted stash is just going to migrate around to her place.

Two weeks ago we made name blocks as a gift to Tonya for running the online classes. This is my name block, made with the hand-dyes I bought from Lisa Walton at the Adelaide show. I threw in a bit of black print to make the 3D effect. This was so much fun, I can see more projects with hand-dyes in my future. Thanks Tonya! I'm enjoying the free-piecing ideas.

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We went to the last patchwork club meeting of the year on Monday, and I sewed all these little 5" blocks. I was diligent in my sewing, whereas Mereth was extrememly distractable and was off chatting for a good portion of the day. We both took our Elna Lotus machines, and they looked so cute together. When we were leaving, both carrying the same sort of machine, one of the husbands stared and said "Snap!" If we ever start to dress alike I think we may need a friend to take us aside and tell us that it's just weird.
I have to find the photo of the quilt that inspired these little Monkey Wrench blocks, so I can decide what I want to set them with. I only have 10 so far, but they pile up pretty quickly. They are made with 2" finished HSTs, of which I have a few already made, so it's just a matter of putting them together with the little 1" squares, which I strip piece. And I could have got a lot more done, except I was busy chatting too at times.

We played a silly swapping game with ugly FQs, except one was gorgeous and I wanted it badly. So did Mereth, but at the end of the game it was in MY hands! No-one could call this ugly, surely.
Last weekend we went to a clearing sale in a tiny town nearby, where a longtime collector and dealer was having a final sale. There was a lot of rubbish there, but as everything was half price we found a few bargains that we had to have. Mereth and I can spot what appeals to the other, which can be useful when there are lots of people grabbing for the same stuff. I found her a print of terriers thatshe loved, and she found me this crochet motif of an elephant. I think if I had an animal totem it would be an elephant; I love the images of them in Indian art, and I'm sure I have a project brewing there somewhere. Later...too busy right now.This came from the collection of a lady who had to go into a nursing home, and was most upset that her collection of 658 elephants would be broken up. The dealer bought them all, and kept them together for many years before having to sell them herself. This is no. 618. And I don't collect elephants as such; I don't want circus elephants and tourist carvings and plastic monstrosities. Just occassionally something appeals to me and I want it.

My friend Meggie collects owls, so I thought I'd show her this tape measure that belonged to my great-grandmother, who was a tailoress. I'm sure she didn't use this professionally, it's too fragile for that. In out childhood it lived on my Gran's dressing table, and we used to reel out the tape measure and wind it back again. Alas, some enthusiastic grandchild broke the mechanism, so it no longer works, but it's still a favourite.
And the penguins? I mentioned in a previous post that I have an irrational fear of being reincarnated as a penguin. These little chaps make me smile, and be grateful that I have hands to hold things.....

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I just can't seem to get it together enough to come up with a new blog post. There's too much else demanding my attention just lately. So I figure I'll just show the blocks I'm working on in my spare moments. I kitted these last year sometime, and have 10 made. I ran out of the white shirting, so I need to find a replacement for the next 10 blocks. I would love to be able to buy bolts of white shirting fabric; I have plenty of cream shirtings, but very little white. It's a good excuse to go shopping, but I can't find any online either. Dang!

I'm stalled on the Double Anvil too, the border is being a problem. We have a trip planned to a fabric shop with lovely reproduction lines, so maybe I will find something and can get that top finished. It's been so long since I completed a top that I feel quite cranky. I need to see progress! I've quilted quilts and made bindings, and done a truckload of work, but I seem to measure progress in completed tops only....

Matt rang up the other day and told us to come out and see the tree that fell down near their house. These huge gum trees are nick-named Widow-makers, because of their habit of dropping their branches without warning. He and his mate were luckily nowhere near this when it went down, exploding on impact and sending a cloud of dirt and dust into the air. He said it was quite spectacular. The fallen branch is balanced on this broken bough, which was driven 18" into the ground. The force behind it must have been immense.

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Another week has flown past, with so much achieved that I think I need to sit down and do nothing for a whole day to recover. My DS is installed in the red bedroom, and has made it his own, as teenage boys do. That means all his clothes are on the floor and the bed is unmade. And the sitting room is full of guitar equipment while my laptop contains Frank Gambale and Chick Corea music (Jazz I think....) and links to computer warehouses. It's all good though, as he has worked on the big computer and made it behave nicely, and he has learnt to hang up wet towels. We are getting on fine.

The Adelaide show was great, I talked to so many people I nearly lost my voice. Caught up with old friends, and met lots of new ones. I do love catching up with so many people, after my cloistered time in the office and sewing room.

As to what I bought, well you'd expect me to buy this, wouldn't you? It's so pretty!
But this is not my usual style at all. It's a bundle of hand dyes from my friend Lisa Walton, and I fell in love with the marbeled texture and wonderful colours. They are much richer in real life than my computer is showing. I can't wait to cut into them..... Sometimes I get a little bored of only working with reproduction fabric, I just need to be different for a while.

I picked up another machine on Monday, a wide format plotter, which I think I love as much as Miz Millhouse. It prints my pantos on 10' long paper, and we all stood around watching it print and marvelling at it's perfection. I call him Gilbert.

Miz Millhouse has been busy; this is a little checkerboard quilt that I custom quilted, just to see if I remembered how to do it. It stayed on the frame for three days, which is far too long for such a little quilt, but I could only find scraps of time to actually work on it. It's a sweet little thing, and is pinned up on the board where I can admire it as I work. I will try to get some quilts bound this weekend, and this will be first in line.
On the machine now is Mereth's Fancy Bowtie, being quilted with her FeatherMe design. I'll let her show you the closeups of the details. It's a lot of fun to choose patterns and threads, and to watch the machine create the stitching. We're still not sick of watching her at work.

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It's been a quiet day, a bit of sightseeing with Kaye and Bruce, a bit of teaching, a bit of playing on the machine. Mereth has bonded with it nicely, and is free-handing happily, filling up a bit of spare fabric at the bottom of the second quilt.I like more formal designs, whereas she likes to invent organic sort of patterns as she goes along. We have totally different ways of working in that respect.

OOOPS! Looks like it's all been a bit too much for Mereth.....
Actually she's just lying under the frame admiring her stitches from underneath.

Hang on Millhouse, you're in for a ride.

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