I need help

According to Random Number Generator, the winner of the giveaway is:

#9 Jan - "Oh I love give aways by my friends, cos I know they are always great things. Please enter me Erin, if I am allowed cos I am across the Pond of course. I wont be cross if I cant. I will still be your friend.  Happy New Year by the way."

Jan, I think I have your address already, but please send it again just in case.  Thanks to everyone for entering and for reading my blog.


I haven't gotten a ton of sewing done lately because I got it in my head to clean and rearrange my sewing room.  It would have been OK, if I hadn't gotten into the closet...I can't believe how much stuff I have!  I did take two pieces of fabric of questionable material to Goodwill, but here's the problem.  While at Goodwill, I thought I'd just peek around for some more pillowcases for more shopping totes.  Yikes!  I walked out of there with eight of them! (It's a sickness, isn't it, this fabric addiction of mine.  I felt like a hoarder bringing fabric out of corners where I didn't even know it resided yesterday.  And then I come home with MORE!)  

(there's only 7 shown, but that's because there are two of the solid pink pillowcases)

The only sewing I have done is to finally get the top and bottom borders added to my Birdie Stitches BOM quilt.  I'm stopping there for now.  I don't think I want more borders, but we'll see.  If so, I'll need to get more muslin as I've run out.


although now that I look at it, I should probably add some white on the two sides, just for balance

 What I should really do is use up some of my fabric as backings, sandwich up some of my quilt tops and do some simple machine quilting.  Some of my quilt tops have been languishing in a cupboard for years - it is time to make them full-fledged quilts!  And time to come to terms with the fact that as a hand-quilter, I will never finish all the quilts I want to finish.  I need to diversify.

Here's a question - how do you quilt a top with embroidery on it?  I'd love to finish up this Birdie Stitches quilt, but I am stumped.  The embroidered bits are about 8" square.  It seems like sewing over them would mess up the embroidery, but isn't that too big a space to leave un-quilted?  Help!  All suggestions are welcome.