misc. little bits

some chain piecing d5 did for me. these are rows for the 16 patch blocks for our "edna" quilt.

normally, i jump back and forth between projects a lot, working on whatever suits my mood at the moment. i recently started three new projects in one day. i expected to be rotating amongst these as i went along. however, uncharacteristically, i'm actually using a different thread color for each project. so once i had this pink thread on the machine, i was locked in to working on "edna."

i dislike changing threads on my machine with a strong passion, which is why i usually piece with white thread exclusively. i'm not sure why i decided to do different thread colors on these three projects, other than that they have very different colors, but i'm actually going to have to stick with one project until the top is done! this spool is keeping me faithful for the moment. no project infidelity here. who even am i? 

 i spent a while fussy cutting these darling heather ross mice on white to use in the low-volume 16 patch squares for "edna." i'm using the ones that have pink clothed mice in "edna" and setting aside the ones in yellow, green, and blue for another project.

many of the mice are not perfectly centered, but i was able to cut the 2.5" squares i needed pretty well from this print with barely any waste. there are a few odd bits that aren't square that i can still use for scraps, and some sections in the thinner strips (1" - 1.5" i had to cut to get the 2.5" strips to come out right) that were just plain white. i trimmed those down around the printed pieces and discarded the white parts. all-in-all, i'm quite pleased with what i got out of this fat quarter.

while doing all this cutting for so many different projects at once, i've been so good about cutting small leftovers for scraps and filing them away in my scrap drawers (which i recently expanded). all the cutting mistakes or change-of-mind cast-offs have been going straight in the scrap drawers, which makes me feel like they aren't wasted after all. give them a new purpose and it makes me feel a whole lot better about not being able to use them wherever else they were going to go. i should have the precut makings of some scrap quilts on hand pretty soon. this is exciting! i'll need to figure out which patterns to use (hello, jolene's books).

the leftover strip pieces or squares are easy to put in their place. it's the larger pieces i don't want to reshelf but almost could that i'm having trouble making decisions about. for example, this piece that was 6.5" wide. 

because i don't have any specific scrap projects in mind that this fabric would be good for, i'm hesitant to commit it to any certain sizes of strips. i could cut a large variety and combination of sizes from this since i store scraps in increments of 1" to 5" wide. how do i decide what to do with this one?

i finally landed on cutting one 2.5" strip as that's the most versatile width. then i could put the remaining 4" strip away in the 4" drawer. in the future, if needed, i can cut it down to something else smaller. yes, i like this solution.