My deal with myself was that if I stayed strictly no-buy (which I haven't managed), I could start as many new projects as I wanted. So I've been starting new projects right and left and have a dozen or so more that I want to start.

That'd be fine if I hadn't done a hurried clean up of my sewing area and totally lost track of what I was working on and where it all was. I've got a scary mess on my hands, which I decided to tackle last night.

I assembled the pink and blue applique cat blocks into a top and went out to the sewing room to find something to use for the backing. I've got some big hunks of pink and blue gingham, but since I don't like gingham and didn't want to deal with it, they're deliberately buried.

I did find a huge length of soft yellow stuff that would work great, and another top for a baby quilt that I wanted to finish. A little quick outlining around the pinwheel shapes, fold the backing around to the front and sew it down as a binding...

It all seemed like a quick and easy finish until I was fighting to get the quilt turned around a tight corner and hit the foot pedal before I got my little finger out of the way. It's been almost twenty years since I machine stitched my own finger, and I'd forgotten how gruesome and painful the results are.

A couple of hours, some butterfly bandages and a bit of Neosporin later, I worked up the nerve to go check on the quilt, if only to make sure there wasn't a bit of broken needle unaccounted for. I don't know how it didn't get bled on, but it was like I'd just got up to take a break.

My finger had mostly stopped throbbing, so I sat back down and got the rest of the quilting and the binding done. I've had so little quilting time lately that I'm not going to give up any good opportunities.



And, since it was only midnight, I finished hand stitching the binding on this one:



I still think I made a mess of it, but it'll make a serviceable baby quilt for some little guy. I've just gotta find one whose mother can appreciate flawed utility quilts.

Now that I've found my new packages of safety pins, I've got two more baby quilts to get pinned and ready for quilting.

And this one, which is going to be for Leif's bed --



I can't get over how much nicer it looks with the borders on. Wide borders don't usually appeal to me, but I love these. Now I've just got to figure out the best way for me to quilt them.

Does having two new FOs count if those projects weren't contributing to the chaos? I did find the blocks for the cat bed so I can work on that tonight. Then I can put away the strings that I've been trying to keep separate for that project.