Too much!

I'm way behind on my quilts. To make matters worse, babies keep arriving, and 3 of the 5 I know which were born this week alone, need quilts making!

What to do when I'm behind? Start more, of course! I don't think I've ever had this many quilts actively on the go. Quite aside from any which I've no deadline for and haven't worked on recently, I have the following in progress...

First is the Owls and Squirrels quilt; it's single bed size, and just needs 4 simple blocks making to finish a border , then the final plain border adding, then it's ready to sandwich and quilt.

I put this aside to quilt a customer's top. That's about half-done, but I was having way too many skipped stitches and thread breakages, and put that aside for a day of two, in the hopes the machine will ebhave tiself when I get back to it - probably tomorrrow evening. The new Bottom Line threads I needed arrived yesterday. Despite ordering and paying for the 1420yd spools, they sent me toe 3000yd cones, which unfortunately don't fit in my machine, and I haven't found a set-up which works while FMQing, so I've been winding some of them by hand onto spare cotton reels in 'spare' moments. Fun!

The pile of flannels has been calling to me from its shelf in the new cupboards. I don't have many; I'm trying to be careful not to start a second stash. But I won some from Valori Wells, and bought a few more to go with them to make snuggly winter quilt for James and Eleanor. So I started on these when the quilting was driving me nuts. They're simply pieced, with large pieces to showcase Valori's beautiful large prints. James and Eleanor are especially taken with the owls, and call them Hoot, after the owl who co-hosts ABC Kids.

I cut enough pieces to make more than enough block for large quilts for both kids and myself. Each finished block is 9in, in about 10 piecing variations based on the 9-patch.This afternoon while Eleanor napped and James was at kindy, I laid out the blocks for James' and Eleanor's. One is now all joined, ready to sandwich and the other is ready to join. I still have to work out the layout of mine.

I bought some backings this morning; pale purple minkee for James' and Eleanor's, and some deep aqua flannel for mine. I decided to use a little of the minkee to give some texture in a quick chinese coins quilt for one of the new arrivals, but won't be doing that again in a rush. The pile on the minkee makes it a pain to piece accurately!

The stacks of coins shown here are now pieced and sashed and only need a few border pieces adding, then this quilt will be ready to sandwich as well. I'm so glad they had a girl - girls' quilts are much easier to design and select fabrics for!

So...what next?!