I've started sewing my sawtooth stars together and I'm having fun choosing the centres for them. Rather than cutting strips from my fat quarters, which would give me about five squares of the same fabric, I went through my smaller pieces and scraps and cut one or two 3 1/2" squares. I've exhausted the possibilities of that so now I'm going to cut just one square from my fat quarters to give me  lots of variety. I've got nearly eighty sets of star points and if I really like a certain fabric I'll cut more than one, but I should have a nice range of material once I'm done.

I've studied the rather blurry photo in the book and decided that I can have warm browns to cheddars, dull reds, stripes, greys tending to blue or mauve, but definitely no green or bright yellows. It's amazing how many fabrics suddenly looked green when I put them next to the apricot backgrounds or the madder star points.

I haven't decided whether this is the setting fabric of not, but it's very nice and gives me an idea of where I'm going.

 Unless I try a lighter tone, or something completely different....I do hate to commit myself to one plan of action !

Pippi is feeling the cold now and puts herself to bed under her blanket. It's so funny to watch her do this, she finds an edge and sticks her nose under it until she can flip it over her head, then she gradually tosses it over her whole body. If she's feeling extra cold she'll then turn round a couple of times, so that the blanket winds around her legs, and collapse in a heap, completely covered and looking like a fat round donut.

But if she wants a bit of a cooling effect, or just to keep an eye on things, she leaves her nose and paws sticking out- I think she's so clever to do this on her own. And cute too.

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When I was going through my Whitman's tins I opened this one and discovered some cut hexagons,of mostly vintage fabric. Sue Garman did a post recently about the wonder of hexagon quilts, and I decided to dig this project out and photograph it.

 (I blogged about it in July of 2008, and showed a photo of the pattern of the seam allowances on the back.)   It took me a while to remember where the rest of it was, and to my astonishment there was a lot more done than I thought. This measure about four feet across and covers nearly half of a single bed.

 If asked, I would have ventured to say I'd sewn together about half of this large piece, and probably about six more rosettes completed. But there was an absolute pile of them, thirty two to be exact.

 When this happens I say the "quilting fairies" have been at work, because I really can't remember sewing this many. The trouble is, I just sew and sew and never stop to count; then the box gets put away and I've got no idea where I am with the project. It's always a nice surprise to find I'm further along than I thought, but disturbing too because the memory is going....

 Pretty, aren't they?

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We had a very social weekend catching up with family, so I've only been able to sew bits here and there. I'm working on about four seperate projects, and I'm getting sick of it, I think I need to concentrate on one or two and really see some progress.

I've been sewing these strips into pairs, and they're mounting up satisfactorily. I probably need to sew them to the length I want and then calculate how many more I need. These are supposed to be my Leader Enders, but there are two other projects I use too- I need to pick one and put the others away.

These are 1 1/2" HST for an old set of blocks I started about seven years ago. I need hundreds more and  they also make good Leader enders, but I think I want to see a lot more progress on these.

And then there are the brown evening star blocks I'm making sets of flying geese for; I'm up to 75 now so I need to choose the centres and get going on them. Talk about all over the shop! We have more visitors this weekend, so I'll have to squeeze in some time to sort all this out, or I'll be running in circles.

Pippi must be feeling energetic again, I had dug over this raised garden bed and smoothed it ready for planting, but this is what it looks like now.

 I'm just so glad she's better that I don't mind, but I think I'll be putting a fence around it when the plants go in.

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 Pippi is almost completely recovered now , and back to her happy goofy self. She spent a lot of time resting in the sunshine on the back verandah, reclining on her cane lounge like a proper invalid, but that's enough of that! The only things to remind her of her horrible experience are sore feet, an occasional tendency to stumble and a voracious appetite. She stands at her bowl wagging her tail back and forth- she's just so happy to be eating again!

It's coming up to Mother's Day and the chrysanthemums are flowering beautifully. I bought a heap last year, and have plans to get more next week , as long as they're not hideous colours or too shaggy and overblown.

 Usually they only flower once a year, but some of them kept blooming at odd times. They don't take much looking after, and I have plans for a big garden bed devoted solely to them. They make wonderful cut flowers, this weekend I'm going to fill the house with them.

I got  a parcel of fabric from America today, some gorgeous repros to keep me happy for a while.

No plans in particular for any of them, but I just couldn't go past this Jo Morton piece, and then I had to fill up the rest of the package...

And now it's nearly the weekend, after I finish a customer quilt, and my dog's happy again and I've got new fabric and I should be able to get some sewing done...things are looking up here!

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I've been distracted the past few days because Pippi's been at the vets under observation, and the house has seemed so empty without her. She began acting strangely on Tuesday, very lethargic and anxious, trembling muscles, reluctance to change positions as if she were in pain and the most woeful look on her face. She was obviously very uncomfortable but we couldn't see anything wrong with her.
 
So off to the vet's she went and I expected to pick her up next day but she had only marginally improved and he wanted to keep her longer. He did discover that her tounge was horribly swollen which suggested a beesting in the mouth, but that didn't account for her other symptoms. I walked around the yard and found a patch of toadstools that she'd been playing with, digging them up and scattering them around, so who knows if she had a reaction to them?

 I picked her up on Friday as she was improving, and had begun to drink and move around  again.She was sooo happy to see us. I think she thought she'd been abandoned there, poor thing. She's still stiff and a bit uncordinated and very hungry as she didn't eat anything while she was there- that has got to tell you there was something badly wrong with her. She loves her food, does Pippi!

 I always tease Keryn about how soppy she is with Dolly, but I missed my dog so much I think I'm nearly as bad. I couldn't settle to work properly because I kept wondering if she was alright and thinking about how upset she must be on her own.

When I picked her up the vet said "She's a very well behaved staffie" and added that most of them weren't! So now I keep cuddling her and saying "You're a Very Well Behaved Staffie!" Dear Pips, I hope she's back to her old happy self soon.

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 The blue and cream top is in one piece and folded away to await the border design- I'm still puzzling about the applique and wondering how complicated I want to make it....

I'm a sucker for Whitman's tins, and couldn't resist this one in the op-shop for fifty cents. (I really don't like the chocolate though, so I'm glad I didn't have to eat this lot). I've been making sets of four flying geese for my new star project, and sorting them into ziploc back in groups of five. I thought this tin would be nice to store them in, but...

It's full already! I have enough made for 59 sawtooth stars, and I want to make 80 before I start to play around with them.

I think I'll move them to this tin, which should fit all of them comfortably. I bought this years ago, and I made the boys  eat all the contents, because I only wanted the tin when it came down to it. I have seen ones for sale second hand that cost more than I paid for it full of chocolate, so they were a good investment.

So pretty, but I haven't seen any like this in the last few years.

Kathie has been talking about a project she's resurrected, and it made me laugh because I have one like it too. Hers is very scrappy, but I started mine as a leader-ender and I wanted all the little pieces to be a dark brown or blue, with light shirtings. The pieces are only 1 1/2" wide, so they make the perfect leader-enders, and they've been mounting up steadily too.

  I have enough for 25 blocks, but I'm not ready to sew them up yet. My version will be very much more subdued than Kathie's; isn't it amazing how we can  make all these patterns  look so individual? I love patchwork for that reason.

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 I didn't hang around on this project, and got the blocks in one piece pretty quick. I really detest those long rows when sewing things together on point, so now I put the blocks together in smaller sections and I usually just have one long row at the end to manage.

 I also dislike trying to press the long seams in one direction, so that the blocks seams are bent over on themselves. So at the intersections I fold them out like this, and let the seams change the direction they're pressed. The points on the edges stay nice and crisp, and it's much easier all round.

 I think this is going to have an appliqued vine border, so the top will have to go back to the drawing board now, but I'm pleased with the progress so far.

 I was looking through some books the other day and something in this one caught my eye.
The photo is fairly indistinct, but the pieced blocks are sawtooth stars, lots and lots of them. They are a sort of russetty madder and the backgrounds are made from warm almost apricot lights. Having a bundle of fat quarters in that colour I decided to make a few stars and see if I can completely use them up.

 I'm just making the geese sets at the moment, and have about forty done so far. Irritatingly, I haven't used much fabric, and worse, discovered more fat quarters when I was going through the stash on the weekend. Oh well, it feels good to cut all this stuff up, and I've still got another forty or more sets of geese to make- I might come to the end of this colour one day.

The photo below is not true to life, the backgounds just look pale  brown, but in real life they are quite pinky apricot. They are also what Keryn and I call "glowy", meaning they don't sit nicely in the background and tend to dominate the colours around them.Time and again I reject them for that reason, which is why I'd like to sew them up once and for all, and never buy any more like that again.

It's funny that we have our own 'stash language' which we both understand immediately. We were shopping the other day for a cream fabric and the shop owner was trying to interest us in various bolts that she thought would work. We kept saying things like "Oh, that's too glowy" or "too strobey, too spotty, too linear, too bitty....." Eventually she just shook her head in bewilderment and left us to it. We know what we want  and most of the time what the quilt wants, but I'm sure other people think we're dreadfully fussy.

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