how things fit together

I've spent the past two days puzzling about how events fit together and how if we hadn't taken that hawk up to Salem on Monday I wouldn't have taken the van in for an alignment later that afternoon and wouldn't have solid proof that the radiator was really damaged in the accident two days later... but if I was going to have that much luck, why couldn't we have been somewhere else and avoided the accident completely? Or maybe my luck was that the boys were all sitting up straight with their seat belts in the right position and Mommy and Grandma were the only ones hurt when we got rear ended hard enough to push us into two other stopped cars?

My week is not going well.

Before things went to hell, I did stop at a rummage sale at the church down the road, hoping to find some cheap cotton shirts to cut up. I never made it to the clothing, because I found this yardage, which will be perfect backing for the baby quilts.



And they had boxes and boxes of quilting magazines for a quarter a piece. I got big stack of old Quiltmakers that I know I didn't have and some Traditional Quiltworks, which is one of my favorite of the older quilting magazines. Then they changed the price to a dime -- I would've gone back and picked out a bunch more, but I was running late and thought I could go back the next day. Could have, too, if I had a car and wasn't on pain meds.

Did I mention that I'm cranky?

As much as I want to finish Grandma's Donuts, I don't want to work on it while I'm dealing with the rest of this. So I'm starting something new.

When I was cutting the sheet into background squares, I made some mistakes that left me with long pieces the wrong size. Perfect to cut into 2 1/2" strips for another baby quilt like this one --



I've been curious to try it with the white and pieced strips reversed, to see if it would be any easier to put together that way. Pretty sure it won't, but it's a way to convince myself I'm not making the same exact quilt twice. I've got a couple of other variations in mind, too.

This is the first time I've mixed truly solid scraps in with the prints. I thought they'd stick out like a sore thumb, but they blended in just fine.



I think I've got two more white borders and a pieced border to do on this top. Then I've got yellow fabric pulled to make a simple Irish chain to back with the Raggedy Ann fabric, and I want to try setting some of those framed squares on point.

Nothing can be dealt with until Monday, so I might as well play.