Power Sewing

I have some major stuff going on in my personal life right now that I don't intend to blog about, but suffice it to say that it's wearing on me mentally and I found myself unable to put two thoughts together for work today.  So what's a quilter to do when that happens?  Mindless power sewing, that's what!

I pulled out my 1 1/2 and 2 inch strip containers and came up with a basic plan.  I started with the light 2 inch strips and the dark 1 1/2 inch strips.  You can see that the containers are pretty full, so some of these strips needed to be used up.

One of my goals for 2010 was to make a quilt from my 1 1/2", 2", and 2 1/2" strip bins.  Of course I originally intended to make one quilt from each bin, but seeing as it's September already, I'm willing to fudge a bit and get a two for one by combining the different sizes into one quilt.

I sewed strip sets together today starting with a 2 inch light strip, adding a 1 1/2 inch dark strip, another 2 inch light, another 1 1/2 inch dark and finally another 2 inch light strip.  I plan to do the same process alternating 2 inch dark strips with 1 1/2 inch light strips, but didn't get that far today.  The strip sets finish at 7 inches wide, or they should anyway.  Not all of mine did, but they were close enough.

I cut 7 x 7 squares and then cut the rest of the strip set into whatever size I could get out of it.  The 7 x 7 squares will be used for the basic quilt I originally thought of and the leftover units will be set aside for now.  I think I have an idea for those too, but for now I'll focus on using the large units. 

Here's what I have to show for the afternoon:

I've got 14 of the large units made, but will need a lot more.  No worries though as I'm sure I will need many more mindless sewing days over the next number of months and now I've got a project to work on during that time.  I got quite a lot of smaller units too, so those will be a nice start to the other quilt I have in mind.

And of course I have to include the requisite cat picture.  Today Tyrone is the featured feline.  He usually doesn't get too much publicity as Sassy is usually hogging the spotlight LOL.  But as you can see, she still managed to get her time in as she is in the background of the picture.  Tyrone and Sassy were both supervising my sewing today and Tyrone was multi tasking by also doing the preliminary quality control work on some quilts waiting for basting.  I thought it was cute how he propped his leg up on the bed while he was sleeping.