majority rules

yikes - apply the brakes!!!

progress came to a screeching halt on the thistle quilt...

i twiddled my thumbs for a few days
 waiting for SOMEONE out there to agree with ME - ha ha ha!!!

it turns out that Melissa and Jennifer and Amy were the Majority and, 
keeping Samuel Adams* in mind, i listened to the People...

*It doesn't take a majority to prevail
but rather a tireless, irate minority,
keen to set brush fires in the people's minds.

no more peeper borders

no more cream background

one batik for the sashings, the other for the binding

and 

corner stones

big problem, though...

 of the two purple and green batik fabrics - which were supposed to be sashing and/or binding - exactly NONE of them played nicely with the thistles... 
this was supposed to be a From Stash quilt, so Melissa and i searched for ANYTHING in the Great Pile of Stuff that would work 

and found Not One Thing... 

unless...

maybe...

i had 14 inches left of a half-yard cut of my favorite purple from the thistle blossoms...

and it just happened to have the name of the fabric line in the selvage - Timeless Treasure The Reclaimed West by Judy & Judel Niemeyer - so i started searching for more of it...

neither of the nearby brick and mortar shops had it, but Over the Rainbow did... 
 so i placed an order...

put all of the bits and pieces away...

and waited...

and that's okay cuz there are puh-lenty of Other Things To Do around here...

anywho, when three yards of kinda bright purple fabric arrived a couple of days later, i thought it was gonna be too much purple and waaay too bright...

so i dragged my feet getting it pre-washed 

and dried 

and pressed

 and folded to cut...

i had to make corner stones anyway, right?!? 

the sashing and corner stones needed to be 3 inches wide - and 9 square inches of any one of those greens was gonna be about  5 square inches too much...

nine patches or square in a square?!?

there wasn't enough of most of the greens to cut more than a few little squares, so nine patches won out...

and after i put all of those little squares together into bigger squares, i was still not Feelin' the Love for the purple... 

having already gone through the first 22 letters of the alphabet
 i came up with Plan W - just in case - and started cutting a bunch more little green squares to sew into 8 inch strips for the middle of those purple 24-square-inch rectangles...

which was a Total Waste of Time cuz the purple actually looks pretty doggone good...

the blocks are sewn into rows...

and after the Oppressive Heat 
drops from the high 90's to the mid 70's tonight

i'm gonna press the seams...

Melissa, Melissa
little sistuh
how does your garden grow?

and see if the tireless, irate minority is keen to set more brush fires...

Untilled ground, however rich, will bring forth thistles and thorns;

 so also the mind of Man.

Teresa of Avila

p.s. - i'm linking up with Mama Spark's WIPs With Friends