Rebellious round robins etc

It is fair to say that I am a smart woman. I have three degrees and two professional qualifications. But there are days when things are simply beyond my comprehension. Not only is the cheese still missing but on Saturday I started to put the applique on my Jungle quilt. I showed it to Mum and noticed that I had done it upside down. Easy done - the center blocks can go either way but, to accommodate the applique border design, the left hand border is wider than the right. Ooops!

The applique is bonded so the solution tonight was to take off the borders and swap them over. So I took the left hand border and put it on the right side. And it was about 1/2 inch too long. Knowing my sewing I assumed that somehow I had made the quilt wonky. Except I took the right hand border and put it on the left and it fit perfectly. How can that be? I don't understand.

However, I suspect my quilting buddy Lesley may well do. It is not often you meet someone with the same tastes and attitides as you. Although there are differences to our lives we have much in common including a devil may care attutide to seam allowances and quilting accuracy.

Whilst at Festival of Quilts Lesley saw her first Round robin quilts and we agreed after seeing all six from the same group that neat medallions could get quite predictable. So we started a challenge - our own scrap, round robin that could grow in any direction we liked. However we liked. As random and improvisational as we liked.

This was what I got back in our swap this week. Dennis took one look at this corner and said "Even I know thats not right!" But you see it is. Because the whole point of our collaborations is that we enable each other to have fun and gift each other acceptance. Besides all I need do is unpick, insert a strip on the bottom and reattach her strip. As wonkily as I like.

Finally - the weekends shopping haul. It includes

(a) copious amounts of boiled wool for jacket making. It seems everyone in my Penrith class has made one and I was resisting until I was told that the fabric was running out when I felt the need to grab the last of the black and some of the green. (enought for two long coats and a short jacket)

(b) £2 each new quilting books found in a charity shop

(c) bolt of white for dyeing and 2 m pieces of fabric from Natwich sale plus cheap curved ruler.