Woohoo!! It's a long weekend here in Australia and the second lot of washing is spinning in the machine and I've been sewing since seven this morning. I have the first half of the Sawtooth stars in one piece, and various chunks of the second half are on the design wall waiting to be sewn. I want this top finished by the end of today if possible.

I was going to buy two metres of fabric to use as the setting fabric, but I realised I wasn't really in love with this set of blocks. Well, not enough to spend $50 on them! I used the pinky apricot background fabrics because I wanted them out of my stash, not because I liked them, so I probably wasn't starting from a good place anyway. In the spirit of frugality I hunted through my collection of browns and found this ancient piece of material, bought in the very early '80's I think. It was marked down and I bought everything on the roll because I loved it so much.Hmm.... could this be the place to finally use it?

The blocks said "Yes", and the more I thought about it, the more appropriate it seemed. While I still love the fabric, it's very dated and there was certainly enough of it, once I'd raided Keryn's stash and pinched back the metre that I'd given her. I had nibbled away at my piece over the years, but now I've got plenty for the block settings and maybe the border as well. It's a lovely feeling to finally choose a place to use a special fabric, especially one I've been saving for, *gulp* thirty years.

I was so happy to be sewing away with purpose that I started to think about backing fabric, and I remembered these giant four-patches that I started in 2010. They were inspired by an antique quilt backing and used quite a few of my expendable brown pieces when I sewed this lot.

 I pulled them from the drawer and counted them- 52, and I roughly estimated I need 76 for this top. I need more!! So that was a great excuse to cut even more browns up , and now I've got some super mindless sewing to do.

My short attention span coupled with the whole sewing room being covered in nothing but BROWN (even the bloomin' leader ender was brown!) made me unearth a set of little red cross blocks, and I'm setting them together in between sewing  the rows of stars. The red is proving a nice lift to my spirits, and I'm getting another little top together, so I feel doubly virtuous. I haven't started another project yet, but I make no promises that by the end of the holiday Monday there won't  be something new on the design wall.....