Hide and Seek

As I grew out of childhood and into my teens, I remember thinking how tedious this game was, especially as The Seeker.

Its allure continues to dim the older I get, logarithmically I'd venture to guess.

As I close out August staying inside and away from the punishing Texas heat, chipping away at several piles in an effort to get them from over- to merely whelming, I find myself seeking things that "just a minute ago" were right there at my fingertips.

That little wood box with the purple Post-It is my box for scraps that are too short for the string bin (under 4") but at least 2.5" long. It was overflowing as I worked my way through the Big Box o' Scraps I created over the summer. It's empty and closed in this picture

because the other day I dumped the whole thing out onto my sewing table and started sewing the pieces together. After several hours spaced out over a few days, I've got over 13 feet of additional potential border (once everything is trimmed to 2.5") to eventually add to my ongoing roll.

Which, I swear, used to be sitting right next to that Big Box o' Scraps.

Well, quelle suprise, it wasn't any more and I couldn't find it anywhere! I was fairly certain I hadn't used it up in a "recently"-started project, so it occurred to me to start looking through my blogs for Proof Of Life.

It didn't take long.

It had been right behind me (as I sat sewing) the whole time--I've probably knocked it to the floor several times over the past 7 months as I manhandled large pieces on the ironing board above it.

My string bin is starting to get that bloated look as I work down the Big Box o' Scraps.

I poked through my virtual folder of String Quilt ideas but didn't find anything that really excited me. But I woke the other morning to the idea of starting a design I've been thinking about for 8 years, this 3D "Picket Fence" pattern (I know it's been 8 years, because the screenshot was created 8/2016).

Years ago I'd printed the image and had worked out the angles and directions of the strips, creating little templates for the four families of hues. I'd been collecting paper to use as foundations--cast-offs of the reams and reams of continuous-feed printer paper that wasn't good enough to use in my home printer (because of rips or printing on it).

The whole pile used to sit at the left end of the cutting table, patiently waiting for its turn to be called off the bench and into play.

Until it wasn't.

I knew I wouldn't have thrown it away, but I also couldn't figure out where I'd've stashed it. The pile of papers, the master plan, and the templates hadn't been stored with the telephone books I save for making string blocks, nor in any of the likely scrap drawers, nor my actual (vs virtual) Project Binder (although while flipping through that quickly--had I put the plan and templates in there for some reason?--I found the instructions/pattern for the Christmas Box top I released from the Pout Drawer last November).

My eye finally fell on a stack of papers cleverly hidden under my quilting warm-up sandwich, sitting on top of some drawers just "across the aisle" from the cutting table (again, right behind me all along). There was the subpar paper

and the sad and battered Master Plan.

 

I recycled the paper and pulled out one of my telephone books, cutting out 120 foundations from that instead. That's enough for a lap quilt; I can always go bigger as more strings are generated. These have been bagged and are ready for some string piecing when I'm of a mind to do so. For posterity: they're sitting next to the string bin, Carolyn!

I putter a little every day in my studio, nibbling away at the Big Box o' Scraps and making headway on at least 3 other projects. I'm cutting 1.5"x6.5" sashes from some of the scraps for the Triple Treat Leader-Ender project, temporarily storing them in the cloth bowl sitting on the cutting table.

Tiny triangles are being collected in the circular tin and its lid for 9-patch pinwheel centers (I do have a limit: anything under 1" from corner to hypotenuse is too tiny). More scraps are landing in the border box (it used to hold two decks of cards).

Triangle squares of floral prints are being trimmed down to 3.5" for this project.

However, the ratio of non-trimmed to trimmed is still daunting.

Nevertheless, she shall persevere!

This little girl wasn't trying to hide at all. She's usually right in the thick of things when I'm working at the cutting table, but the allure of all that softness was too much.

A peek at the crumb quilt's cobbled backing.

I believe that people who insist donation quilts NOT be washed are:

1) not quilters, and/or

2) not owned by cats.