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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