A decision (or two)

I don't know why I only ever get the urge to clean my room in the middle of the night, but I'd like to say this: the sun gets up waaaay to early. It's light outside. That's not okay with me. I think in future I should be consulted.

Anyway. It's 6am. It's been a long day/night (though clearly not long enough?) so it feels like a long time ago when I picked what to wear tomorrow (tonight?).

The skirt was a dress that had a bodice for someone boobier than me, so I just chopped it off. The top is what I mad a couple of weeks ago for the fluro party and ended up wearing for about 20 minutes with a pair of jeans, before taking it off in favour of rednecking it in a white tank top. I need to sort out some shoes, but I figure I'll just go buy a cheap pair from Kmart.

Shame

I've spent the past few days waiting for the urge to clean out my closet to hit. I've known it was about to arrive since mid last week, though I couldn't tell you how or why. I just knew that I was about ready to do it, and that when it was going to happen, it would.

Tonight it happened. I was going to make a start on the back of the striped lattice quilt, using more of the blue as well as the 9cm strips of striped fabric I'd cut way more than necessary of for the binding. But then I couldn't find said strips, and bam! Suddenly it hits, and I'm pulling everything out and trying it on to see if I should keep it or not.

I accumulate clothes like something else that accumulates a whole lot of things without noticing it. I cant think of a good simile for that one, so I'll say this: every time I clean out my cupboard, I can fill at least two big garbage bags worth of clothes and shoes to give to the salvos. Without realising it, I end up with a couple of dozen pairs of jeans, and twice that in shirts, and then all my piles topple over, because I'm not very good at folding things that aren't quilt fabric.

And even though I feel bad that I have so freaking much stuff, I don't know if it's okay for me to be ashamed (because oh boy am I a victim of capitalist consumerism) when I'm giving all this stuff to charity. Not to mention the fact that probably half of it came from the Salvos to begin with - I think the fact that it's so cheap there is a big part of how I manage to accumulate so much.

Maybe the Salvos should be ashamed?

Good Questions.

Why is laundry so much easier when you're dancing badly to the music in your headphones?
Why do I only ever get the urge to tidy my room at 2am?
Why did all these coathangers end up under my bed?
Why do I own so many dresses?
Why do none of them look as fabulous as I want them too?
Where did my boobs go?

I ended up finding my boobs in one particular green dress, after trying on SEVENTEEN other ones. That's right, I had 18 dresses to try on tonight. In my cupboard. There are actual dress shops with less dresses than I have. I didn't even try on my fancy dresses, since I'm trying to get started on my packing for Stonerollers next weekend, and I'm not going to wear one of my good ballgowns to a BnS ball.

It's a bit early, by my standards, to be getting sorted for a ball, but I've got quite a week ahead of me. Thirsty Thursday is off, because in the wee small hours (actually about 6am, but that's still barely medium sized) I've got to go into town so I can get driven to Adelaide. As long as my snoring doesn't wake the baby, I'm allowed to sleep in the car - it's a bridal party trip to the city to look at dresses and flowers and such for Meagan's wedding. Three days in Adelaide, then two days at home, then back to Adelaide for a lone-wolf shopping trip, and then it's Saturday and time to drive down to Murray Bridge for Stonies.

Gah, crazyness. So it's best that I start now: two loads of washing done, dress picked, fur coat found but not yet cleaned. It probably needs to be professionally done, but I think they'd disapprove of the fact that I let it get covered in food dye and then put it in a box in the shed. I only paid $16 for it, so I don't feel all that bad, I just know it's gunna make a mess of me when I go to clean it out. Food dye, even when it's dried in, gets everywhere once you wet it again. I'm usually covered in dye days before I even get to the ball, but with it forecasted to be cold and miserable, I'm gunna need my coat.

More pictures in place of actual crafting...

Another day, another night spent not really feeling like crafting. It may be the crotchet's fault, since I can do that while watching youtube and BBC news guilt free. You can't tell for looking at it, but I'm totally making something there...


Fortunately, earlier today I decided to get out and take a few more photos out at the woodshed. For some reason my camera was absolutely refusing to flash, so the ones in the actual shed all came out dark at the top. So I shifted out to the big bits of wood outside.

And discovered the fundamental flaw in making quilts that feature a lot of white. Curiously, the really white side (above - remember, this is all the one quilt) was fairly clean, which meant I could spread it out nicely...

..but this shot isn't so much "trying to be artistic" as it is "positioning it so the two big stains don't show."

I've re-washed it, so it's good again for now, and I chucked the green quiltlet in with it, to see how the poly batting washed up. Honestly? You can hardly tell the difference between washed and unwashed. It looks fine, but I like the way a cotton quilt suddenly becomes super massively crinkly when you take it out of the dryer.

Video crack.

Yes, I did have to tidy the end of my bed somewhat to take this picture.

But it's all sewn now (not pressed, but yay progress) even though it didn't get done till after 4am becasue I got distracted by youtube.

Damn you youtube!

Prototype'd

I devoted most of tonight to cleaning my room.

Well, I say that, but really, I devoted most of today to standing about my bedroom with my hands full watching Long Way Down, or staring at my fabric shelves coming up with new ideas, and moving my clothes around. Still, my room looks a bit cleaner, mainly because the clothes are in the cupboard and/or the laundry.

And once I had performed the nasty task of re-compressing the mess after it'd been magically expanded to fill the whole room and, worse, cover the bed I was wanting to sleep in, I sat down at the machine for two minutes to have a got at this little prototype.

Two birthdays this weekend, and both of them are getting quilts I wont have made - Becky because she always seems to have a problem with the fabrics I choose so I'm giving her a Spotlight voucher and instructions to buy at least 3 metres of quilting fabrics with it, and Anna because she won't be getting her swag till after her birthday, so I don't know how big a quilt she'll need for it. I figure a tiny quilted card is the solution, and I wanted to see how my machine would go with the card. Great, as it turns out, except the bobbin ran out half a square before the end.

Oh well, it was only the prototype.

Not mentioned in this post: the fact that I have the hiccups.

Tonight I was going to finish work, go to the gym for my usual 42 minutes, come home and have an early night. There's a protest to attend tomorrow, and it starts at noon. NOON! I'm usually just doing the last of my sleeping then, so that means an alarm, and going "ergh" and arguing with myself that Chinese investors can have the damn forest, I wanna sleep in, and eventually getting up in time to get a terrible park, miss the first 10 minutes and not have anything for lunch, since I have to be at work a half hour after it's scheduled to finish. But I suspect it will run over time. Such things usually do.

Alas, it was not to be. Meagan and I spent an hour and a half at maccas, it still took me 42 minutes to watch an episode of Buffy at the gym, and my plan to write a list of things that need doing in the next two days got sidelines when I started, um, actually doing them.

So I'm torn over whether it's a good thing or a bad thing.

I didn't really get much of anything done though; a vague shuffling around of the mess in my room revealed a black lace top that I bought at kmart about a year ago for $6 but never wore - it had a fairly high neckline and long sleeves, but they're gone now.

I think I prefer deconstructing clothes to the actual making-them-from-scratch thing, probably mainly because that involves tricky seams, and an always-surprisingly-large amount of fabric. This I did most of the chopping in the bathroom, cause that's where the mirror is, and I just folded it over and sewed it down at the edges. It's the top half of what I'll be wearing Saturday night - the bottom half is still yet to be decided.

And no, the room's not really any cleaner.

Goin' Adventurisin'

Well the dress is washed, the CDs burned, the carrots chopped into little sticks and the coat... Well, I have to admit, the coat isn't looking it's best. I think it's time to call in the professionals: there's only so much you can do for a full length fur coat that's covered in blue food dye, especially when all you have to hand is some old towels and a hair dryer. But it will do for this weekend, and we shall have to look at getting it dry cleaned when we get home.

This BnS is called "Bush Chooks" and it's held in a place called Paruna, about 500km north of here. Noone knows we're coming - Casey is working till 1 tomorrow so we will be driving up in secret and arriving (hopefully) and hour or so before the ball starts. Fortunately, I won't be able to do a shot of vodka with every drink I have, so it shouldn't end as badly as a few weeks ago.

I hope my (still) bruised coccyx doesn't hold me back. And that I come home some other colour than blue. I'm so freaking sick of blue.

Viva la Revolución

My mother has decided we can wait till my room has been painted to put my furniture back in here. Granted, it hasn't been painted in the 17 years since it got a lick of light grey undercoat, but oh well. I like light grey undercoat, but apparently, after 17 years, it must be "under"

In retaliation, I have chosen a slightly darker shade of grey as my paint choice. I've also decided, in lieu of sleeping in yet another bed I don't like, to bring in my swag.

And my flop chair. And a powerboard, for the essentials. Mum hid the router behind the curtain, for reasons that aren't immediately apparent.

As far as a quarter life rebellion goes, it's not much. I still don't have a sewing machine either, which is especially annoying considering I'm filled with a near overwhelming urge to get the two part-done bags finished, and start on a third (which I will need to find the fabric for - it being in a tub somewhere) but at midnight on a Sunday night, after a busy 9 hour day, it's the best I can muster.


Viva la Revolución? No thanks, I want my real bed back.

Cleaning still.

The closer I get to the end the harder it is becoming. That makes sense I suppose, since you leave the hard bits till last. Most of what's left I could probably just shove into an enviro bag and into the cupboard, but It's a mix of important stuff that I want to remember the location of, and unimportant stuff that I forgot to put with the rest of the unimportant stuff, or didn't come across until it was too late to do so.

Also, there are cables. Lots and lots of cables. I'm a bit ashamed to say I'm running four powerboards and 3 double adapters in my bedroom. I know it's an electrical risk, but this bedroom was built before laptops and mobile phones and routers and two sided electric blankets and me owning two digital cameras and handheld computer* and two tablets and a sewing machine and an alarm clock. I'm pretty sure originally it ran two bedside clocks and two bedside lamps. When I get the bookcase, I will need to chop a hole in it where the powerpoint is.

Tomorrow we have to take out the furniture and put it out in the bar. Becky has cleared out already because she's mainly living at Todd's these days anyway, but Casey and I need to get our stuff out still. The man comes at 8 Saturday morning, and will apparently be tearing out the old carpet before he puts the new stuff in. That's a big relief to me, since the carpet I have now really, really, really likes pins. I spent about an hour picking them out, but I still probably only got half of them. They burrow in though, so you almost never get them in your feet. I think I might put one of my little quilts underneath the sewing cabinet when we get the new carpet so I can just wave my magnet over it and they will all get picked up.

I've also decided to get rid of my magazine collection, although the initial attempt nearly killed me, but not for the reason you may think. See, I put them all in a big bag on the bed, one of those woven plastic ones you get at Cheap as Chips, and then I went to lift it. And then when it turned out to weigh as much as, if not more than me, I fell off the bed. As if the runny nose and asthma attacks weren't bad enough, this cleaning malarkey is trying to get me any way it can. I've since split them into four much more manageable enviro bags. For those of you who were interested, there were some beading magazines, lots of old issues of Empire magazine and the first two dozen or so issues of Top Gear magazine. When I get my new shelves, I will need that space for fabric.


*actually, I have two of these too, but since they're identical, I only have the one charger.

Found it.

Tonight, for the first time in ages, I found myself wanting to get home to do some sewing. And then I got home, and found that my room was still torn to bits like I'd left it six hours before when I'd gone into work. Including 2 big tubs, a really old travel bag and a suitcase full of handmade toy monsters squarely in the way of my sewing machine.

Oh well. I found a lot of other things today too.

Lots and lots of socks. Literally dozens. That's the advantage to buying pretty much the same socks over and over, they all match one another, with very few odd socks remaining. All the socks that I found were black size 2-8 Bonds ankle socks with the padded soles. The look kinda like the one in my header, but in need of a wash.

Lots of zippers. Some individual ones, but quite a lot on rolls too. Over 20m of zipper all up.

Quite a few packs of blank CDs. Four USB sticks and two external harddrives. Five 3-pin-clover cables with Australian plugs. One with a US plug (I threw it out).

My Pandora bracelet with the blue beads on it. I had just assumed that one of my sisters had taken it.

The pattern for the ballgown that I threw out the instructions for yesterday. Thankfully, I am a smart cookie, I shall just figure it out.

Lots of hairties. Even more bobby pins. Half a dozen nailfiles. A box of pore strips.

A quilt cover that will make some really nice bags once it's chopped up.

Some blocks I made out of the blue charm squares Shay gave me when I visited her in Adelaide that I never got around to assembling into a second pillow*

Quite a lot of foreign coins.

Some carpet that hasn't seen the light of day in a couple of years, and will, sadly, be torn up in 5 days time and replaced.

Tomorrow I need to find myself another half a dozen tubs, and then by Thursday night I suspect I will find myself sleeping in an empty bedroom.

In the meantime, I need to find myself some hand sewing projects. Or I could set up the sewing machine out in the bar, maybe do a bit of quilting, drinking and listening to late 90s music out there.

*weird fact, I made the first pillow in yellow and now cuddle it more than I cuddle either Mo (the sheep) Alex (the monster) or Eleanor (the elephant). I figure this can only be a good thing, as it means I can remove my toys from the bed should a boy decide to spend the night in it, without depriving me of an inanimate object to cuddle as well as him. For an update on the boy situation - he's sick with tonsillitis, so nothing is happening. I find this as boring as you no doubt do.

It seems like a good idea...

Even though I said I wasn't gunna buy any more fabric till after my room was clean, I did buy some hot pink cotton sheeting today to use as a binding for the rainbow steps on black quilt, which is very nearly all quilted - it would be but the moving stuff around thing has left the machine even more, um, congested than usual.

I had originally planned to bind it in black. It has a black border and background, and well, it seems obvious, which of course seems to me to be a perfect reason not to. The quilt itself doesn't contain a hot pink in the piecing - The colours are all kona and the bright pink looked a bit faded compared to all the other colours, so it goes from the orange (I used tangerine and school bus) through to just the far side of purple (cerise). I've really struggled to find a super-bright pink in quilting fabric, but Spotlight has some 285cm wide 100% cotton sheeting that is exactly the colour I wanted. I also have to applique a heart in the corner, which will be the hard bit for me, though at least it will be quite small and in the corner. And yes, I have quilted it before appliqueing - I plan on shallowly needleturning it and then quilting through a foot's width* inside the seam just as I did with the piecing.

I have tomorrow off, so instead of cleaning like I should, I'm sure I will be finding new and exciting ways in which to procrastinate. Binding. Binding's toats fun!**


*by this I mean the width of the machine foot, which, being metric, is about .75cm. I don't mean I'm sewing a foot (12inches/30.4cm) from the edge. Obviously. That would be dumb.
**no, it's not. But it's better than cleaning out my room.

The truth is out there. But it's a bit dull...

I realised today when everyone wanted to know why I'm finally cleaning my room that I never actually said anything about it before. Clearly, I'm cleaning my room so that when it comes time to bring a boy home to shag, I won't look like a crazy hoarding quilting lady.

Actually, that's not it. I don't care about the fact that I am a crazy hoarding quilting lady. And it's not like it's not a fairly well known fact. It's probably a more interesting story than the truth though, which is that one of Dad's mates bought a house that was only carpeted last year, but he's decided he wants hardwood floors instead. So Dad's scored himself a heap of nearly new carpeting, and decided to re-do all our rooms.

Boring.

Progress is horrible and slow. And sneezy, and heavy, and neverending. Four 52L tubs and four big garbage bags have made no discernible dent in the stuff I have accumulated over the last 5 years. Come Thursday and Friday, which I have off, when I can put it off no longer (Dad plans to do it over the weekend) I'll be faced with the nasty job of picking which sewing projects I want to do for the next few weeks, because I can't really put my room back together till I've been to IKEA in Adelaide, and that's not till the end of the month.

I hope a shag that isn't in the back of a ute and/or a new carpet is worth it. I may hang the big rainbow quilt on the wall, though I will have to put my beautiful wonky mingle quilt somewhere else, perhaps on a different wall.

I'm sure that once it's all done I will love it. Don't expect any before photos, they won't be taken. But hopefully my room will soon be "after photo" worthy.

Clearing out

This clearing out thing is hard. I keep telling myself just to turf stuff, that it's been sitting in drawers, and at the back of bookshelves, and under the bed, for so long that I didn't even remember I had it, so I may as well just throw it away. But then half the time it's things I've made, or even worse, things I never finished, and it's like, well shit. I put time and effort into this thing and now I'm gunna turf it. It seems like a massive waste, but then I think, no, this is a perfect candidate for the too hard basket. Buh bye, strange little thing: into the rubbish bag. You're only holding me back.

And then, I get to the supplies. Half used spools of cotton. Bags of odd toy eyes and noses. Knitting needles. Spools of ribbon. They've been sitting there for years. I don't know if I will ever use them. I paid good money for them once, but, just like all the other crap, I've been throwing them out. It just seems easier. There's too much nice stuff for me to just consider torching everything and starting over, so I keep telling myself that unless I love it, get rid of it. The spools of cotton you have to hand are never the right colour anyway.

I'm truly amazed though at how stuff seems to expand as soon as it gets taken from wherever it was and put into either a tub for storage or a rubbish bag. 3 small drawers managed to fill one of each. I'm about to do the dresser and I dread to think how many tubs I will need for that.

PROcrastinating.

I have been quilting. It's felt kinda good. Boring, easy, achieving-things good.

It would seem that if you've lost the motivation to quilt, tell yourself you need to clean your room. Quilting, even difficult spinning zigzaggy quilting will be nice and peaceful and easy.

It will also give you time to ponder your new problem: if you have to pack away all your stuff for the next few weeks, what are you gunna leave out to sew? I won't have a big bookcase to start unloading all my stuff back in till we go to IKEA in Adelaide the weekend of Stonerollers... 22 days from now, plus however long it takes me to translate Swedish flatpack instructions. I don't know what I'll feel like sewing tomorrow, let alone 21 tomorrows after that.

No wonder my long procrastinated quilting seems like a fun thing to do just now...

Bags

Somewhere in my bedroom are 40 magnetic bag clasps.

God I wish I knew where.

I bought a really big one today at Spotlight because I thought it looked funky, but I'm making two bags.

Or I would be, if I could find a clasp to put in the second one so I could get it finished. Sigh. I suppose I should properly finish sorting my room. Does anyone know where big tubs are on special this week?

Another reason for needing to clean my room is that we have decided that we are going to host a woolies party. The teenyboppers had been pestering me to host one for a few weeks and Casey has decided it's been too long since we had a piss up we could fall into bed effortlessly after. We are thinking a Happy New Financial Year one on the second, but we're not sure who's working when.

Anyway, back to the bags.

I'm terrible at photographing bags :(

Already full of stuff.

New design, which I didn't entire think through and therefore had to hand sew a bit. Base of bag (brown bit) and the lining were made and sewn together, and the top bit and handles were made to slip over the top, with the intention of then just running the join through the machine to attach them together. But I didn't leave enough at the top of the base to be able to pin the two together well enough to run it through the machine, so I had to tack it down by hand first. But I'm incapable of simply "tacking something down" - if I'm gunna hand sew I'm gunna do it right.

The brown fabric is a faux suede type furnishings fabric that I bought a few metres of a while back. It feels amazing, although it's probably a bit too brown for me. Don't get me wrong, I like brown (being the colour of chocolate and all) but my bags are usually a bit more rainbow. The lining at least is a tie dye I bought on ebay ages ago. I sometimes forget that I never ever use them and buy them accidentally. Oh well.

That's the inside (pink) and outside (same batik as the band on the first bag) for bag #2. It's the same as my last 3 bags. I really like the design, for all that it doesn't have pockets. And the opening is bigger on this one than on my finished one. Still, I guess I'll be using it for a few days, till I either find all the magnet clasps or give up and go buy another one.

Baby Steps.

Unfortunately I had to work today (I said no, they said okay, they called back and asked again, and this time it was an afternoon shift, so I said yes just so I could go back to sleep for the rest of the morning) which got a bit in the way of my big cleaning plans. As did this:

My first ever layer cake. I haven't done anything with it except take it apart, rearrange it, sort it into little groups and stack it all back together again. I think I'll do the same star design as I did for the first retro quilt, but I don't know what to pair it with. Casey thinks something like Kona Lagoon (well, she thought "that one", which was Kona Lagoon) But I think I want a really pale lemon-lime. It's really really nice though it does have the same problem as Central Park in that it has really nice large prints, which I find a little hard to work with, and of course the name of the line rhymes with the name of the designer. Which I really really hate. If it's not a song lyric or a couple of lines from a poem, it just should not rhyme.

This is why I am always rude to people called Louise*. It's not personal - their parents just gave me no choice.

Back to the layer cake though, I've got 6 lots of four prints in similar shades and 2 more lots of two which will make a quilt with four rows of three and a half stars. And there was eight quite nice pale squares that I'm gunna put with some other fabrics and make something nice with too. Probably before I do the actual quilt, because pale lemon-lime is not a colour that displays well on monitors, and therefore difficult to buy online.

Once I was done despairing over my inability to find a complimentary solid, I got into doing at least a bit of room sorting - I went through my cupboard and bagged for the salvos, well, nearly everything. 21 pairs of jeans by the end of it (I still kept 13, which should give you an indication of how out of control my wardrobe had become) about the same number of fluffy roll neck jumpers and knit dresses and long sleeve tees. And a half dozen pairs of boots (well, they're stopping off at a friend who has the same shoe size's place first) and quite a few strappy heels that I probably only ever wore once.

So now at least all my often-worn clothes are in the cupboard instead of on the end of my bed. The rest of my room is still terribly messy though, but baby steps.


*I always say "please" when I call someone over the PA, except for two of my co-workers who are called Louise.

Crossing fingers and toes.

I have pretty much left quilting by the wayside as I work on my mp3 collection. I feel bad about it, but on the other hand, I really am starting to feel like I'm getting somewhere. Which is good because it almost makes up for the fact that it's really really boring and I'm not gunna get a pretty blanket out of it. Instead I'm harnessing plans for a super amazing portable jukebox that can plug into the nearest sound system, maybe run from my tablet. Which I have to send off for a replacement charger for, because apparently some other peoples' have spontaneously combusted. Maybe from sheer awesomeness, but more likely an electrical fault.

I was thinking I might maybe do the little pinwheels tonight but then I didn't get home till 12.30 because Meagan and I managed to talk for two whole hours. About everything and nothing. And some other stuff too. And it was probably more fun than pinwheels anyway.

Good news though - I get the next two days off. And what I couldn't do in two weeks of holiday, I'm hoping to make inroads on in two days.

Yep, it's time for cleaning my room: Third time lucky.

WB, mojo...

There is a singlet top from Kmart which I re-buy on end of season clearance every year. Some years are better than others - most years I have to pay $4 or $5 a pop (regular price is $10) but one year they got down to $1.50. With the exception of the hottest days of summer (I get sweaty belly, so I wear a proper bra instead) I will pretty much always be wearing one of these singlets. They are super comfy, stop my boobies roaming free* and look nice too, because of the little pleats at the neckline. The straps are not too skinny, the back is not too high the armholes don't open too far forward, and they are long enough that they don't ride up at the hips.

Clearly, they are the one true love of my life. 

Oh, and I cut one up to use as a pattern a year or so ago, and some of my favourite formal tops were made from it.

But naturally I can't find any of them now. I really need to clean my room out, but I'm under the impression I have missed my 3-month window of opportunity. Come March I can say I am Northern Hemisphere Spring cleaning, but that's still a while off.

So here's the test one I made before work today. I can't show it to you on, since it ended up slightly too small, and even though I got it on earlier, it took two people to help me get it off, so I wont be putting it back on just for a photo. (there's no zip, it's meant to be just an over and on thing, even without stretch)

It's actually almost the same construction method as my handbag, with the pleating on the outer and the lining, and sewn face to face before being flipped right side out. I didn't do the bottom, since it was only a test, and the shoulder join is a bit shoddy, so I'll need to work out an alternate method, but the theory seems to hold. I need to make the straps longer and everything else a bit bigger, and do my pleating a bit neater, and have a go at ironing the creases out/in as necessary, but I feel like my mojo has, like most of my tertiary-studying co-workers, returned home for the holidays.

Unfortunately what my mojo actually wants to do while it's down here is watch How It's Made, an utterly fantastic show on the Discovery Channel. I don't blame it. Tonight, episodes 3, 4 and 5: Toothpicks, Copy Paper, Toilets and Beer, among other things.

*but my boobies are pretty well behaved anyway, and almost never need to be bra-d in.

I found it!

The other night when I was feeling bummed, going on eBay to shop my sorrows away didn't really work, because I had randomly decided that the thing I wanted/needed to make my life complete was a bundle of the mingle fabric (same as I used for the wonky mini quilt)in the purple/green/brown colourway. 

Noone had it on eBay and my short look around the internet failed to bring anything up, but then the internet is a bit too big to search thoroughly. This morning though I was doing my blog catch up, and the guy who quilts had done a post on a quilt he had received in a swap that was made of the same mingle colourway as the wonky quilt. At the bottom of the post he did some links to his sponsors who still had the range in stock, and the only bundle anyone had left was this one.

*happy dance*

Understandably it was A LOT more expensive than the stuff I'd bought on eBay - $23 compared to $15, and the postage was still $13, making it way over my usual $3 per fat quarter budget, so I bought 2 bundles and that made it $3.25 after the currency conversion, and that's reasonable.

Plus, since I got 2, I've got enough to do a very decent sized quilt, my usual size requiring 12, and I've got 20 to play with.

The bad news though is that I haven't made any progress on the quilting; since I needed to wash the backing sheet I took the time to sort through my junky tubs and clean out one of the cupboards. 2 big garbage bags of coats and dresses, mainly stuff that I got cause the ex liked, have made their way to the Salvos. Now though I need to hem some curtains for Mum, and then it's back to it.