Midweek Update

Sorting through the junk drawers...

I have one of these plastic 3 drawer units in my sewing room - it's probably something many of you have.  It's a convenient place to stash lots of things, and in my case, it had gotten a bit out of control!  I've sorted through and cleaned it out before, but it just got full again.  

After pulling everything out - one drawer at a time - and doing a bunch of sorting, here is what I found.

Lots of solid scraps:

Skinny strips up to fat quarter size.  

And some small pieces of Grunge.

Lots of orphan blocks in multiple sizes:

  

There is a big pile of leftover charm squares - all different colors, styles, and prints:

And Christmas scraps, all shapes and sizes:

So, the question is what to do with these scraps?

• I need some Christmas scraps for the last house I'm making for a Year in the Neighborhood - there are definitely possibilities for that in this bunch.
• At first the solid scraps didn't inspire me at all, but I realized later that they would be perfect to make a bunch of the little plus blocks that Nancy at Grace and Peace quilting introduced us to a few weeks ago. 
• I'm not sure what to do with most of the orphan blocks, but I did have a little fun this week making a snack mat out of the small red and white block.  It was made many years ago, and I think it was meant to be a "Polaroid" block.  Remember those?  The different widths of white sashing around the center square are the clue.  I think in this photo, it's upside down.

I added a red and white HST border to frame the cardinals, and then extended the block to 10.5 inches wide with the floral.  The binding isn't sewn yet, but you get the idea!

There are still plenty of scraps to find their way into projects, but my drawers look a lot better than they did when I started!

Sharing at The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.