Stash and WISP Report

Our weekly stash report is due to Judy L. on Sundays. I've been remiss up until now because I've not reported at all. Wouldn't you know it - for my first report I must confess to some purchases. I figure they were allowed, however, as they were all for borders. I still have lots and lots of strings to stitch into blocks, as well as 1016 Crumb Chaos blocks to sew into quilt tops. By the time I finished all of last year's charity and orphan quilts my border stash was more or less depleted. So I chose 2 1/2 yards each of six different border fabrics. These patterned solids such as Moda Marbles, Maywood's Shadow Play, and Michael Miller's Krystal make perfect borders for these quilts. Whenever possible I cut my borders on lengthwise grain - they just behave much better that way. I can get the borders for two quilts out of each of these pieces, so I feel they were a worthwhile purchase - especially since they were on sale at 30% off.

As far as stash busting goes I didn't do much last week. I used 1/2 yard to make the bindings on the two Christmas table runners. I'm OK with that however, as my current focus is both May Britt's WISP challenge and the Stashbuster UFO challenge. Until I start making backs for tops to be quilted I'll be using stash for nothing but bindings. And that is OK.

Speaking of May Britt's WISP challenge - I've loaded my third WISP for 2008 onto Gandalf and started the quilting. This is my first orphan train top from last summer, which will be a camping quilt for one of the beds in our tent trailer. I'm quilting it with a pantograph of leaves - I figured that was appropriate for camping. I'm also using Hobbs heirloom wool, which should be perfect no matter what our camping weather. I hope to finish the quilting on this one either tonight or tomorrow morning. It will be so nice to toss the sleeping bags we are currently using. They were expensive down bags when we bought them 36 years ago. Now they are uneven, lumpy old bags with down that has migrated into wads in some areas and left other areas devoid of any warm filling. They should have been tossed years ago, but we needed to replace them with something first.

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Gratitudes:

1. No rain this morning to mar Fred's golf game

2. A new 120" tape measure

3. Leftover pizza for dinner

4. A warm bagel with light strawberry cream cheese

5. Shadow slept in this morning!