Scraps

August continues to sizzle here in Wisconsin. Definitely the dog days of summer, pond slime, crunchy brown lawns and the smell of hot black top pavement. All of which tend to make me grateful to be inside, with the AC, and playing in my scraps.

The amount of scraps that accumulates staggers me ! A bit of seaching and poking around revealed that I was up to 4 of the tall popcorn tins full of 1.5" strips and scraps. At one time I did have the 1.5" squares in a seperate container, but must have needed it for something else. They now swim freely with the strips, creating more confusion.

And so I began the task of getting them out of there and into their own little pond. I have been working on a scrappy log cabin again. I only work on it when I feel like it. I'm trying a red corner square, vs. center, and building out from there. A light added above the first red, and then a dark next to the pair. Another light across the top, and then back to a dark one up the side.
I find it goes together faster than when you are doing the balancing act with a traditional log cabin. And I like it better than the side to side way of the courthouse steps. I hadn't know how I was going to set these little guys(6.5") but having seen Bonnie's on her blog page, I'm now committed to putting them into pinwheel blocks of 4.

I also have begun a Railroad Crossing quilt that uses 1.5" X 4.5" strips. Sets of 6 make one unit of the "tracks" part. It's getting some of the shorter strips used and will make a dent in my odd yardages to do the setting blocks and triangles. I'm shooting for about a twin, so I only need 80 of the "tracks" parts. I hit 40, sewn and trimmed this morning. And I'm almost emptied one popcorn tin..hurray for that!

In the mean time, as I hide from the heat and humidity, I have worked my way through red, orange, yellow, pink, peach and turquoise in the process of straightening up my stash. That takes care of one side. I have brown, rust, black, blue, green, lavender and purple to go..plus the kids novelty stuff and then the flannel shelf. What I have done looks sooo good! Oh yes, and the plaids over there in that big box....

I have black fabric lined up on the cutting board and the plaids will soon be there too..almost to where I will jump into the letter making ala Tonya's blog. I only need about a billagion E's. Should be EEEEEEEEEEEEEZ, right?