Making progress

Last night I finished pressing all my strings. These two baskets full look so much better than the tangled mess they were before! Turns out there aren't as many as I thought there were. Lots of the mess turned out to not be strings after all - more like oddball shaped pieces that I'd separated by colors at one time and put in ziploc bags. That was when I thought I was going to make string spool blocks - with the thread as the string - and needed strips and pieces only 4" long. So I culled a lot of those - I just didn't feel like dealing with little odd shaped pieces smaller than 3". I know I could have made crumb blocks, but as it is I have enough fabric for 3 lifetimes at least. I stamped on my feelings of guilt and tossed those in the garbage. Also tossed were lots and lots of very narrow strings where the widest part of the strip was less than 1/2". Whatever possessed me to save those to begin with I'll never know!

I managed to piece two more blocks on Wednesday night, and I'm already playing with ideas. I like the graphic design when I put them this way on the design wall. I'm thinking of doing a double sashed quilt - with a small 1" sashing inside each four block set. What do you think of solid black sashing with cheddar setting squares? Then maybe the larger sashing in a bold red? When I'm at the retreat next week I can cut some strips to play with on the design wall.

I also have these baskets of 2" squares to deal with. There's a funny story about these squares - at least it's funny to me because it's so typical of my quilting. In 1992 I got to go to the Houston Quilt Festival with the Daisy Kingdom entorage. I took a scrap class from Dara Duffy Williamson. We were to bring "a large varied collection of fabrics". I just couldn't decide what to take, so I cut an 8" square from every piece in my stash to take. My suitcase weighted a ton! In the one day class I made a total of 4, six-inch blocks. The lady next to me didn't read the class sheets and had brought a total of 4 fabrics so I shared my loot with her, but still brought most of it home untouched. Fast forward about 5-6 years. I took an "Illuminations" class from the Watercolor ladies- Pat Magaret and Donna Slusser. I needed 2" squares of lots of fabrics, so I cut my remaining 8" squares into 2" squares. Illumination turned out to not be "my thing", so all I accomplished was putting some squares onto a design wall. In the meantime I had 15 pizza boxes full of 2" squares sorted by color and value. Fast forward to the present and Bonnie's leaders and enders. I dumped all the squares into two baskets and have been stitching them together as a leaders and enders project ever since. I have no idea what I'll do with these - I imagine as I continue to stitch them together they'll tell me what they want to be. In the meantime I'm having fun visiting my stash in tiny increments.

After work today we're heading to the beach with our kids for the weekend. I'll miss everyone while I'm gone, but hopefully I'll have some completed appliqué blocks to show you on Sunday night!