Invasion of the Sleep Snatcher

The whole time I was working on my mother's quilt, another project kept simmering in the back of my mind. It wasn't simmering quietly, either. It was actively invading my sleep with weird dreams. So, as soon as I could in the evening after I finished "Jackson" (my goofy name for it, not my mother's!), I set to work preparing for Bonnie Hunter's Scrappy Trip Around the World using all those 2.5" strips cut from my bin of N1C (Not 100% Cotton) fabrics last week.

First thing I did was sort those 600-700 strips into lights/mediums/darks. Lots of hard squinting as I examined all those strips covering my cutting table, trying to determine whether a light or dark was really a medium (and vice-versa). That brought me to dinnertime. After another night of weird dreams, I was more than ready to take inventory and figure out my plan of attack.

It made sense to pull together 2 dark strips, 2 medium, and 2 lights. There were two enormous bundles of darks: a maroon, and a plaid (which you can see peeking from under the layers of off-white and light blue strips in the bin picture above). But there was also a black & white plaid that I couldn't figure out where to put (other than with the "Problematic Prints"). So I decided to go with that as one of my darks, and the maroon as the other. There were more than enough strips to make 35 blocks; very quickly I settled on a pattern of Maroon/light/medium/Checked/light/medium. The Maroon and Checked would be constant in all 35 blocks, and the lights and mediums would be pulled somewhat randomly from those stacks of strips.

One prototype later

and my fears of how the various N1C fabrics would behave (alone and with each other) were tamed. I wouldn't have to sew down every seam allowance to prevent fraying, so that extra step wasn't going to interfere with spinning seams as I ironed the strips (too much sleep lost over that possibility!)

Next step was to assemble the strips for the remaining 34 blocks. Lay out a Maroon strip, leave some space, lay out a Checked strip, fill the block with two lights and two mediums, make sure I like the contrast, then stack and clip all 6 strips together.

After that, the blocks went quickly and before too long I had enough to admire on the design wall.

In the first blush and excitement of starting a new project, I like to do the hard stuff. As a project gets older and assumes a little aura of burden-ness, it's harder to make the effort to do fiddly work. Knowing this (about me and about projects), for every one or two blocks I assemble using 16" strips, I'll take the extra time to assemble a block made from short strips (there are 5 blocks kitted up with nothing but short strips, set aside for intentional choosing, not mixed in with the rest as an unpleasant surprise).

 

There's a fun element of assembling a jigsaw puzzle when things are sewn together little bits at a time, but I'll be glad when these short-sheeted blocks are done and I can churn things out lickety-split.

Zoe had her opinion about how little lap time she was getting all day. When she wasn't sitting in the middle of my cutting table, she was napping in the most uncomfortable "nest" I've ever seen--all the cables and hard plastic bits and pieces amassed behind the (embroidery machine) computer. At least she wasn't trying to catch and chew the thread as it continuously zoomed off the spool.