Happy first birthday to this little cutie! She is so beautiful and has the most happy laid-back personality. She enjoys an adoring fan club, especially uncle Matt and her two nannas.

She has strawberry blonde hair, with ginger highlights and wonderful blue eyes, and I often think how how our mum would have loved to see her. She always wanted a redhead in the family.

 I'm loving having her so close so we can play a part in her life.

Love you Isobel!....

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 I sewed the borders on my four patch top, at last. I love this grey brown fabric and I think it calms down the busyness of those blocks nicely.

I like the way the yellow border doesn't turn the corner, it makes things a little bit different.

I've been calling this block "Abacus" because the little squares looked like beads on a rail to me.

I enjoyed making the four patches, and setting them on point in the block.  I might be making more of them at some stage, I don't feel as if I've finished with them yet.

For something that is completely outside my usual colour choices I've been playing with some bright scraps, making lots and lots of 2" half square triangles. It's been fun, but I do adore my more sober reproduction fabrics.

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 I've made progress on this top, and the blocks are all set together now. I think I'll have to photograph it in daylight to get a true indication of the sashing colour, The camera insists that it's bright yellow, and it's not.

I tried all sorts of clever pieced border ideas, and the blocks rejected them all. I was in the mood to do a heavily pieced border using more four patches- lots of mindless sewing, and using up heaps more of those small scraps. But the top says no, so who am I to argue? I've settled the border question now, and I'm cutting and sewing the strips for it, but I'm still a tad disappointed.

I can hardly wait to finish this and add the fabric to my 'Used' total. I've only added 22.25  metres of fabric to the stash this year, and I've used 22. This top will put me in the black, and I can feel virtuous about how my stash is diminishing...HA!

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