Sometimes you have to...........

......... admit when it's time to stop working on something and come back afresh

When I looked at Sarah's DofE quilt I realised that there were two blocks with only three of the four fabrics included so I decided to add a little applique to bring in that elusive fourth fabric

With this in mind I remembered that one of the blocks had originally been destined to be a honeybee block and Sarah's reluctance to learn hand applique was the stumbling block preventing completion at the time
Well to an old applique addict like me the addition of the four bees was a five minute (okay half an hour) job

This left the final block................
and what could be sweeter to break up that centre yellow diamond than the 'Mary Quant' style flower I'd used on Quilts 4 Leukaemia blocks previously sent to Clare

I then proceeded to the borders.........
and the narrow green one went on quietly.

But my enthusiasm waned with the outer flowery pink border and the work sat on the cutting table for several days

My attention wandered and I sneaked back into my neat and tidy, labelled to within an inch of its life cupboard where my gaze settled on........

an assortment of fabric I'd selected for a baby quilt for a dear friend who is due to have a caesarean in a couple of weeks

That was it - the DofE quilt had been usurped

Usually I would leave it and all its accompanying fabrics out, shove it to the corner of my sewing area and make a start on the new project - as you can imagine several projects later the detritus mountain will have reformed

But you would have been very proud of me. I packed the DofE quilt and its assorted fabrics back up into its labelled bag and returned it to the correct labelled ufo box in the cupboard.

That's my new philosophy, if it isn't the current project put it back in its correct home - it will eventually surface again as the favourite of the moment to be worked on at another time

So I changed allegiance to the baby quilt and settled for nice and simple friendship stars at 9" finished

Some toning 3"spotty sashing and striped cornerstones to pick out the green of the crocodiles
and voila! The top is complete!!! Sadly I don't have enough of the block centre animal fabric to do an outer border so I think I shall leave it at this - it's 39" square and probably just a nice size for a baby so borderless it shall be

Mind you it wasn't without the odd hiccup - last night, after an extremely emotional day including a family funeral and a lengthy drive there and back, when stitching all the blocks together I managed to transpose the two left hand blocks on the middle row - obviously time to admit defeat and head off to bed.

A good night's sleep left me refreshed, and delighted by the England win in their initial Rugby World Cup game, to do a bit of unpicking and restitch the blocks in their correct places this morning

......... and now the top is back in the cupboard with all my other completed tops in their neatly labelled box as I'm not quite in the mood for sandwiching yet so I'm hunting another ufo to come out and play with me for a while