Middle Of The Night Sewing

 Last night was the second night in a row a very little sleep.  About 4 hours of here and there sleeping each night.  Nothing on the internet or TV worth watching so I had to find something to do that wouldn't wake up Mr. Podunk.  As you know I've been quilting up old UFO quilt tops.  The Strawberry Shortcake quilt is still on the frame, but my quilter is kind of loud, and Mr. Podunk is a light sleeper, so I opted to sew at the sewing machine. 

The lights came on in the sewing room at 1:32 a.m.  As I stood in the middle of the room considering my options I spied the two tin boxes above my pressing table.

One of them holds my pin stash.  The other is full of pink and green squares of fabric.

These were cut about a few years ago when I took a notion to cut all my scraps into usable sizes.  After a couple of days of cutting I realized it was a bad idea.  Most of the fabric cut was added back to the scrap bins.  I'm not sure why I put these in this tin.  Anyway, the 1.5" squares were just what I needed.  My first thought was to sew them together as is but y'all know how I like white background fabric. So, the plan changed.

Under my quilter is my white scrap box.

The white scrap box is overflowing so this is the perfect time to use up some of the overflow.  

In the mess under the quilter, I found a fairly good size piece of backing scrap.  Using the larger piece of scrap makes cutting the background fabric quicker.

Within no time I had my assembly line set up and it was pedal to the metal time.

By 2:34 a.m. I had used up all of the background fabric, and I was starting to feel a little tired but not tired enough to go to bed.  So decided to edit these pictures and write the blog post.  While writing the post for today I started thinking about what to do with what I had sewn.  Writing the blog post came to a screeching halt and put off until this morning because I needed to use EQ8 to draw up a plan.

At 3:17 a.m. I started playing in EQ with ideas.  The plan is to keep it simple and big.  You know I like big quilts, at least 90 x 90.  So why not just make a four-patch quilt?  This will require a lot more four patches.  

I'm not sure how many two patches I made last night but I can tell you for this layout I'll need 1,089 four patches.  Whoa! That's a lot and I love the plan!  Here's a close up that looks a little better.

Then I started playing the what if game.  That's pretty much how I roll all the time when designing quilts.  The new plan is... Instead of using only green fabrics I could go super scrappy and use all the colors and low volume fabrics for the alternating block.  I love it!  By this time, I'm sleepy.  At 3:38 it was finally time to go to bed.

It didn't last long....awake at 5:58 a.m.  Fed the dog, made decaf coffee, read e-mails, watched some news, surfed the internet, and decided decaf isn't going to be enough for today.  It's errand day and sunny outside. 

 8:30 a.m. I'm drinking full octane coffee, writing this post I'm praying for a better night sleep tonight. If not, I may start cutting for the quilt above.

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