happy to be home!

I'm back from Iowa!  It was a great trip - lots of catching up with my old friends and watching our kids play, some fun time outdoors (despite the cold!), and even a little bit of crafting (some bat wings for my friend's daughter's halloween costume - sadly, I didn't get a photo!).  

Of course, there were also some not-so-great parts...  Like when Vada pooped in her pants (first time EVER!) at the airport before we even left Seattle.   Thank goodness I had a spare set of clothes in the carry-on!   I was so proud of myself for being prepared, but also terrified for the rest of the day that it would happen again, and I'd be screwed...  Ah, the joys of parenting!

And as usual, I caught a cold on the last day, and had to spend that horrible first day of being sick traveling back home.  I seem to always get sick right after I travel - I hate that part!   So, I'm popping Sudafed like candy and trying to get back in the swing of things.  Laundry is mostly caught up, and now I'm thinking about my crafty to-do list...  I only have a few short weeks to prepare for the quilt retreat, but I'd also like to whip up some quilt tops for the Hope Squared project.  Those are due by Nov. 15, and since I'm going to just send tops+backs, I'd like to send them as soon as possible so that they have time to be finished up (by people who are much better/faster quilters than me!).   So, those will come first. 

I was starting to get out my collection of 5" squares, when I happened to notice this poor abandoned UFO.  Maybe there's a way for me to salvage it for this project???  It's my very first attempt at quilting, before I knew anything about it...  I wanted to make some I-Spy quilts, so I just cut some novelties into 6" squares, and used plain old muslin scraps to add sashing to two sides of each square (stack of those on the upper right), then sewed those into rows of four (stack of those on the top), and sewed those together and added extra sashing, to make these really small and pathetic little tops.  I was even planning to try to make it double-sided, using one for the front and one for the back.  Luckily, my friend Robin very gently let me know that was a pretty bad idea.  :-)   Soon enough, I got distracted by other projects, and these poor guys have been sitting around ever since.

I have enough blocks/rows to turn these into two decent-sized tops (6x8 blocks each, instead of 4x6).  But I'm not sure about that muslin.  I know it's "just" a charity quilt, but I'd hate for it to fall apart after a few washes...  On the other hand, I've used muslin for other projects (like linings for bags), and it's been sturdy in use, even though it seems pretty thin by itself.  Does anyone have any experience using plain old muslin in a quilt?  I really don't relish the idea of chopping it all apart (I'm much more of a "make it do" person than a "do it over" person!), but I also don't want to send something that won't be usable...