A day of scrappy sewing

Anyone who has been reading my blog for any length of time at all will know that I'm trying to keep from generating too many scraps, and that I do this by sewing them together into scrap quilts...

Today, I was faced with the prospect of lots of time to sew - something which hasn't happened much lately - and to make it better, my choice of sewing project.  So I decided to tackle the scrap basket - which wasn't looking bad at all - 

and the strip bag, which was getting pretty full. 

I also had a look at the small pile of larger scraps, but decided to leave most of them be, except for a few which got turned into strips at a later point.

First step - sew the scraps together until I got 4.5" squares. I used some of the shorter strips at this stage as well. 

Then I made 4 patches, using some squares from my "green" scrap drawer.  These scrap drawers used to be full to overflowing and are now barely worth having - this is a good thing, as I'm hoping to phase them out a bit, maybe just revert to a scrap basket and strip bag. 

Then, I took the strips and added them, log cabin style, to the blocks, until I got a block at least 12.5". I trimmed, and that was the finished block. 

Here's another -very scrappy, but at least with some larger pieces it won't be quite so off-the-wall as a quilt.

And look at the scrap bag now - almost empty. It just has the strips which were too short to use, and the 1" strips, which I decided were too narrow for this particular project.

And the scrap basket is even emptier. At one point, it was actually totally empty, but of course, making the blocks has created some new scraps. 

I'm not quite done yet, still have to put strips around some of them, but that's a project for another day.