HAPPY QUILTING DAY! (a day late)

Thank you for all your kind words during my computer woes. I hope all of you learned a lesson from my mishap. SAVE EARLY, SAVE OFTEN! And, Debbie, we already tried to recover my data by making the old drive a slave but David couldn't get anything at all off of it. But thank you for trying to help. It was a great tip just didn't work for me. :-( Okay, no more gloomy computer woe posts. What's lost is lost and no sense crying over it forever.

Did you all have a Happy Quilting Day? I did. :-)

This is what I worked on. I spent the day cutting out my Batik Lucky Stars and got this sample block sewn. Plus the star points for half the blocks. I bought the pattern to make this last year just never got around to cutting it out. Now I can't find the pattern! But it's a simple enough pattern to figure out on my own so this is my version. Mine finished at 15" per block. It will have a 2" border of the background fabric followed by a piano key border. I'm using the border pieces as leaders/enders while I sew the blocks so the borders will be mostly done by the time I'm ready for them.

I have very small scraps left from 20 FQs and a 4" strip left from the 2 yds. of background fabric. And the star points are 2 nickels each cut from 20 more FQs. Add the fabric for the framed squares I did last week and the Bricks and Stepping Stones I also cut out and that's a LOT of batik stash busted. I want to find another pattern to cut up some of the rest of the print batiks and then whatever's left gets cut up into my strip/square/brick bins. The TOT ones will be blended into the rest of my stash and that will be a whole shelf cleared out of my stash cabinet. WAHOO!!!

I continue to work on my the rows for my swap. I went to the LQS Friday to get fabric for the last 2 rows. Barbara requested red and gold and I didn't have anything I considered gold. So I picked up 4 gold FQs and 4 red ones. I do have a bunch of reds but these looked so good with the golds I had to get them. And Tammie requested burgundy and blue. Now blue I have tons of but - burgundy? - exactly WHAT shade constitutes burgundy? I thought I knew exactly what I needed but when I got to the store everything was either too red or more maroon-ish than I was looking for. I did pick up a couple FQs so hopefully they'll work well with whatever the other ladies choose. I was really surprised because I thought this would be an easy row but it's turning out to be one of the toughest for me to pull fabrics for.

You won't believe how good I was at the LQS. I bought 11 FQS - ALL of them for the rows - AND NOTHING ELSE! I did look around but I just wasn't tempted by anything. I've been having so much fun playing in my stash - in particular with my scraps - that I had no desire to buy anything new. You just can't have any idea how sooooooo unlike me this is! I just looked at all the pretty fabric. Petted a few of them. VBS. And walked out of the store with exactly what I went in for and nothing else. Hurt my shoulder trying to pat myself on the back. :-)

I did see several really pretty fabrics that not too long ago would have followed me home. But I'm so into scrap quilts right now that I'd rather make my tops from my scraps and THEN go to the quilt shop to find borders. And I will have to purchase for borders as I've busted most of my stash of larger cuts. But that's fine. It means my stash is working down to be more usable for me with the scrappy quilts I like to make. I think my purchases at least in the near future will consist of FQs and maybe a few 1/2 yd cuts of prints and TOTs to liven up what I have and no more going into the store, buying 2-3 yds of a focal fabric and 1-2 yd cuts of a few co-ordinates. I rarely make quilts with just a few co-ordinating fabrics so why do I keep buying the co-ordinating groups of fabric? If I find a pattern I want to make in a limited fabric palette then I'll take the pattern to the store and buy the fabric I need. Paraphrasing something Bonnie Hunter once said, "It can wait at the quilt store until I'm ready for it! It might be on sale now and probably gone when I go back but they'll have another equally gorgeous fabric that will work just as well."

I wish for all of you that you have as much fun with your quilting as I'm having with mine. :-)