I've started another scrap quilt in a very controlled palette of blue, apricot, tan and cream, based on an english quilt I saw on a blog. It's an antique in a small museum, but I can't find the post to link to it at the moment. I have a whole heap of these colours in the scrap bins and they keep getting passed over in favour of others, so I thought it would be brilliant to use them all up in one fell swoop and then cut some yardage to finish it off.

However to my consternation, the scraps seem never ending, and even though I've made over 80 ninepatches













 and the strip sets for another 50 or so,

  there's still a pile left.













 I'm beginning to think I'll make the centre of the quilt without ever having touched the yardage drawers, and there will still be a smattering of scraps lingering around to taunt me.

Depending on my mood, I can either rejoice that I'm getting a whole new top for seemingly nothing- "it's totally made from scraps!!", or it can depress me - "It's made completely from scraps. I'll never get to use the yardage in my stash...sigh.."

I started off in the first mood, but now as I look at the heap of fat quarters I pulled out, hoping to whittle them down, I'm slumping into the second mind frame. Even if I cut a 2" strip from all of them I'd have too many and it wouldn't make much of a diference to the overall pile. I've already decided the back will be pieced and there might be more than the one pieced border I'd planned. Surely after all that I'll be able to see a gap somewhere?

 Back to the magical scraps that never end....

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It's been a quiet day here, with John and Liz having lunch at Keryn's place to celebrate Mother's day. I'm not one to make a big fuss over what seems to have become over commercialised occasions, however it was lovely to catch up.

I was reading an Eleanor Dark novel years ago, and one paragraph struck me so much I copied it out so I could remember it. And when all the ads are screaming about what you 'deserve' for Mother's day, I think of this...

"And she said sadly  " Parents are very selfish creatures Tom."
He protested indignantly "Selfish? Nonsense! Give up their whole lives to a pack of ungrateful brats! Get nothing in return! Selfish be damned!"
She shook her head. "There's nothing we ever do for them that gives them half the joy they give us,- just by existing."

from "Return To Coolami."

Becoming a mother was the making of me; thank you my boys...

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