Up to my ears in hour glasses

I had such good intentions for this past weekend. I planned to finish my string pieced top, then quilt both it and the postage stamp quilt. Since I took a personal day Friday I figured I could easily accomplish those goals over the four day weekend even with a couple visits to Sophie tucked into the schedule.

Well, so much for my plans. Sometimes I can be so easily distracted! My friend Kathie is making an hourglass quilt from 4 1/2" squares of 19th century reproduction fabric. She's been sending me updated pictures regularly of the quilt's progress - and it is beyond wonderful. All last week I was thinking about my big tub of 4 1/2" squares that have been aging for a decade or more on a shelf under my cutting table. So Thursday night I took out a couple squares and made a pair of blocks - only one pair of blocks just to see how they looked. And that was my downfall. This was just WAY too much fun! So Friday evening found me with that tub - cutting sets of squares into quarter-square triangles and stitching them together. Hundred and hundreds of them. I couldn't believe how many were hiding in that bin! I worked on them all the rest of the weekend other than a visit with Sophie and her parents on Sunday. By last night I had completed the first stitching on all of the triangles, and the second stitching on half of them. I pressed 30 blocks and trimmed them to size so I could see how they looked up on the design wall. I love it! Totally not fabrics I use these days, which made it all the more fun. Many, many fabrics I didn't recognize at all. I finally realized that they were from fabric clubs I belonged to years and years ago where they'd mail you a bunch of 5" squares every month. That was long before Nickel Quilts became the fashion, so I'd trimmed them down to 4 1/2" squares to get rid of the pinked edges. So many of these squares represent the only piece I have of each particular fabric. Others are from maternity clothes I made myself over 30 years ago, as well as many of the outfits I made my daughter over the years. How fun to see these again!

Thus I failed my one goal of completing at least a couple more UFO's before starting a new project. But I figure that's OK - this completely emptied my bin of 4 1/2" squares except for a stack of solids that I'm going to give away - so I'm sticking with my goal of starting new projects from my cut scraps only.

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Gratitudes:

1. Fabric surprises hiding in scrap tubs

2. A short work week

3. Wind chimes singing in the wind outside the bedroom window

4. Snowdrops and crocus blooming along our front walk

5. A great first checkup for Sophie and Chelsea

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