Got a couple things to photo-worthiness today. I also had a quite productive trip to Hancock Fabrics, where every item I purchased was 50% + 15% off. Of course, with one of those being a roll of batting, the grand total was fairly impressive. As the rest of the order involved individual zippers, the length of the receipt was also impressive. The cashier wasn't totally impressed, as it was a couple inches shorter than she was. She has evidently had two taller than she was before. It is also fairly impressive how not one employee stopped to help me lift the batting of the top shelf, but customers went out of their way to help. Why are people more considerate of others on their free time than when we are getting paid to be helpful? One elderly man literally ran across the parking lot to open my car door for me. When I got home, I got to work, I finished enough string blocks for a quilt. And I cut sashing and set squares. I laid is out all the blocks since I worked on them in several batches so the same batch of fabrics wasn't all in the same section of the quilt. I grabbed the first pile and got ready to sew, and discovered that oops... the strips were 1/2" too short. And as I had chosen to use a brown fabric that was left over from the backing of a different quilt, I didn't have enough to re-cut 2" strips, but I managed to squeeze out enough 1 1/2" strips to make it work. I only had to piece 10 of them out of the original 2" strips, and I am left with these:

Since I have a similar batch of brown pieces from an exchange a couple years ago already in the drawer, I think I need to some kind of project involving 5 1/2" or 7 1/2" blocks that can be set with brown... Here is what it turned out put together.

I also used every last safety pin to get this one basted. Making 6 the most quilts I have EVER had ready to quilt at one time. And I am pretty sure that unless they were all miniatures that is the max my safety pin stash will accommodate

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Strips and strings

After a trip to Idaho last weekend, mom sent me home with a big bag of strips and strings. Why did I agree to take them again??? But I did. Some of them are really awesome fabrics. There was this grey and blue batik that was pretty amazing, Some were special. Some just make me wonder, "now how did these end up here???" Like the frogs. There is probably close to a yard of this huge print of frogs, kind of a tropical print cut into a range of strips from 1" to 1.75." Why? This is my question. Why would you cut so many skinny strips of something there must have been a purpose at some point, and then not use it??? One night this week, I got them sorted and pulled out all the 1.5"+ strips for log cabin blocks as well as the strings and 1.5" strips of the more bright juvenile prints. I now have enough blocks for an all-pink juvenile log cabin quilt and blocks a second "boy" log cabin done. I am also closer to a 2nd "girl-y" log cabin, but I think doing all the pink blocks left me a couple strips short on a handful of the blocks. I am also caught up on the juvenile string blocks. (I have a set using boy fabrics with blue in the center and a set using girl fabrics with pink and purple centers.) This evening I was working on the "grown up" string blocks. When I started these I chose to do 8.5" blocks. What was I thinking? The difference in number of strings between a 6" and an 8" block is crazy. But I have all the blocks started that I think I need for a quilt. I think. I will see how big it looks when these are finished. They are getting so close, but I am soooo dead. So tomorrow? I should be getting ready for the week, but I may sew instead. I have these blocks to finish and then I'll have two log cabins and one string top to put together. And the bag of strings from Mom doesn't look like I have taken anything out of it... And that is not even mentioning the 1.5" strip drawer. It is full. Ok, bursting. I also have been pressing/trimming/sewing triangles together that were left over from various projects. They work great in between things, when you don't want to stop and clip your threads and you want to take everything you've sewn to the ironing board. It is amazing how much you get sewn when you just sew that little extra seam between things. I am kind of impressed with how much I have been getting accomplished, though it doesn't always look like it. There are I think 2-3 quilts waiting to have binding hand sewn down. 5 basted and waiting for quilting (thinking about a quilting weekend on the long weekend). 1 waiting for to be sandwiched (I just MIGHT have enough safety pins left over after basting the other 5? It is a small quilt...) And now blocks done for these ones. If I keep knocking quilts out out of the scrap bins, will I eventually be able to close the lids??? I know that is a crazy goal. The roommate hasn't been buying fabric for too many scrub tops lately, so I have a chance to make a little progress, as long as I don't do crazy things like accept "gifts" of bags of scraps.