Trimming in the rain

You know, friends, it is a *lot* wetter here on the East Coast than it is in the Midwest.  Seriously, it rains much more often here.  I know it's snowing in many parts of the Midwest, but it's not the same.  This is not a bad thing, really, because it means lots of flowering green things are coming.  And it also means. . . I did not spend last weekend digging trenches!  You can dig trenches in the rain, but it tends to make the trench collapse, so it's pretty much a wasted effort.  Count me as a major fan of rain!

Since we had nothing planned for the weekend except digging trenches, *and* it was raining, I spent a bunch of time doing things that I really should have taken care of a long time ago.  You know, throwing out all the old shampoo bottles, cleaning under the bottom drawer in the refrigerator, and taking care of all this:

Yes, it's not that pretty a picture, but this is the pile of scraps I tackled this weekend.  This is everything that was in the basket next to the cutting table where I throw all my cut-offs when I'm working on things.  I know I should cut them up just as soon as I'm done, but somehow that doesn't happen. No idea why. I've gotten really good at pushing them down in that basket until it's really full (and heaping!)  This weekend was a good opportunity to haul that full basket onto the table and finally get a handle on it.

So I spent several hours-- with frequent breaks!-- cutting up the scraps and ended up with these pretty piles:

These are 1-1/2 inch, 2-inch, and 2-1/2 inch squares, plus a bunch of strings in the front.  I promise that none of those strings is less than an inch wide! I am really, really proud of myself for persevering and getting those all cut up.  It doesn't look like much but it takes a long time to cut those up. Of course, a lot of water was falling from the sky, so it was not a real sacrifice.  And look what else I got out of the scraps in that basket:

A bunch of bindings! These are from the cut-off pieces from the backings of several quilts.  These make great bindings.  Some of them look short, but they're all at least 60 inches long, and the gold one is enough for a 65-inch square quilt.  Not that I have one of those right now, but I might someday.

At the very bottom of the basket were two collections of scraps that I had kept together, so I didn't cut these up and mix them with the others.  Here's the first collection:

I think my taste in fabric has really changed, because I really don't want to use these for anything.  They're plenty pretty, but I am not motivated.  I remember making the quilt these are from, and I don't have it any more.  I'm too frugal to just toss these out, so I'll bet they end up in a donation quilt some time soon.  The others destined for the same fate are these:

Yep, they're not tripping my trigger either.  If you have any good ideas, I'd love to hear them!

The last things I worked on in the rain were these:

These are a whole bunch of half square triangles that were either left over  from projects, never made it into projects, or were the wrong size.  I squared them up to standard sizes and they are now ready to use.  I don't have a project for them, and they're different sizes, but hey--when a project comes along, I'm ready!

All in all, the last few days have been good and relaxing.  It's nice to look at that basket all nice and empty, plus I have some bags of those squares that are getting pretty full.  Soon it will be time to look for a project to use those up.  And the mostly empty shampoo bottles are gone now, too.

Hope you're all having a good week and are enjoying the last day of Fenruary.  Hard to believe March is here already!

Sharing at Let's Bee Social and Oh Scrap!