One more albatross

There was still a bin weighing heavily on my psyche while I was in Oregon and even more so when I got back home and added more to it from the scraps I brought back with me: my N1C (Not 100% Cotton) bin.

At one point I tried separating out lights from everything else (they were in the black mesh container, I think). That didn't last long. I lifted the whole pile and sorted through the contents (I initially typed "pulled out", but it's been so overflowing for so long, I couldn't tuck any of this into the designated shelf from which it could be pulled out).

After some time sorting, I discovered I had large hunks of yardage, some triangles (red rectangle in the red bin), and actual strips in the red bin and the tupperware container,

as well as some completed triangles and 5" string squares, some started 5" string blocks, an ongoing scrap border, and the leftover panels from, I think, the Sister quilt.

Having just finished the Trip Around the World blocks for a Magpie hug quilt, that's what I decided I wanted to do with the big hunks of fabric.

It took about 3 days, but I finally tamed all the yardage and have it trimmed down to 2.5" strips. They're not all 16" long, but if there was enough to make a block, it went into the pile (e.g. two strips of 8" each, or three strips of 6", would be enough to make a block using that fabric). I lost track around 400 or 500, so there's the equivalent of either 600 or 700 16" strips in the middle bin shown here.

 That's enough to make 3 TATW quilts of thirty-five 12.5" blocks each (set at 5 x 7). The red bin holds strips under 2.5" in width, the plastic bag holds those string blocks and triangles, and somewhere along the way I lost the Sister panels! I think they ended up as dividers between layers of 100 strips in the clear bin, early in the process when I thought I'd need to keep each group of 100 separated from the previous one. There's a bunch of random white strips in the black mesh container. A whole bunch! Possibly enough to make a string quilt with all the blocks having a unifying white strip down the center.

Is good to take an accounting once in a while!