It started simple enough — my 1 1/2″ box of strips is overflowing and I’ve been hankering to make a Log Cabin quilt. Not that I don’t have at least 3 projects that I’m actively working on, or that one of my goals this year was to finish anything new I start, or that I have several projects waiting in the wings that are on my list to finish this year.

But would this be a new start if the strips were already cut?

Anyway, I pulled a bunch of 1 1/2 inch red squares or pieces which were at least 3 inches long out of the box. I spent time last night separating the lights from the mediums, brights and darks. I pressed my lights and then decided “dark” would be anything that wasn’t “light” and mixed my mediums and brights back into the dark pile.

At that point, I should have put everything back into the box and sat on it to get it to close if necessary.

I made 40 cute little red and light 2-patches.

Then I sewed them to dark strips. — some times with the light square on through the machine first, sometimes with the red square first, sometimes with the dark fabric right side up.

I pressed and trimmed the blocks only to discover that I didn’t always have the 2-patch oriented the same way and I had a couple of the dark fabrics with the wrong side of the fabric up.

It wasn’t until I came back to my computer to figure out whether I needed a dark fabric or light fabric next that I discovered my biggest issue. My first strip should have been light!

This is when all the strips got put back into the box.

The box is no longer overflowing, but I think it’s because I pressed the light strips, not because I used that much fabric.

It’s taken 3 days, but I have no more blue scraps. Instead I have 3 1/2″, 2 1/2″, 2″, and 1 1/2″ strips; 4″, 2 1/2″ and 2″ squares and HSTs – most which finish at 3″

Click here to see what I started with.

I’m off to see if I can get them into the appropriate boxes, then I’m going to go piece!

I have things I want to finish with self-imposed deadlines of next month. What am I doing? Cleaning my sewing room and digging through my scrap basket for blue and light scraps. However, now that I’ve found all the blue and light scraps (need them for a workshop next month), I think I will go make myself make a pillow case. At least I haven’t started a new quilt…yet.

No, this does not mean I’ve finished anything new.  It does however mean, I’ve moved a quilt from the pieces stage to the top stage and more importantly dealt with the left over fabric.   Last night after I cut up my 15 minutes of pressed scraps, I pulled down the project box for Ladder to the Stars.  I have left over red, gold and blue fabric — well the blue wasn’t totally leftover — part of it was for the binding.  So, I cut, seamed and pressed the binding, then put it with the quilt top in my quilt top box.  I’ll get it quilted eventually, but it’s not on the list at the moment.  Once that was taken care of I put the larger pieces (anything bigger than a FQ) in the appropriate color box and chopped up the rest for my pre-cut boxes.

I’m sure the box won’t be empty long.  Once I finish Part 4 of Carolina Christmas, it won’t fit in the shoe box.  That box won’t stay empty long either — several of my pre-cut boxes are stuffed so it will become an overflow box.

For the record, this is a ArtBin Deep Super Satchel One Compartment # 9000AB. I have a dozen of them and they are great keeping projects together. They stack neatly and with the handle, I can just grab the box and go. They are pricey, but I bought mine with 40% or 50% coupons or when they were on sale at Jo-Ann’s and Hobby Lobby – one or two at a time.