IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT...

when I can't sleep, I don't fight it.  I get up and act like it's the middle of the day.  I put on a pot of coffee.  I check my email and answer any new messages.  I knit.  I read.  And sometimes, like today, I go to my cutting table and catch up on processing scraps.  Here's my setup:

In the center is the basket of scraps.  Not too full at this point!  On the right is the iron, the pressing pad and the water spray bottle, so the scraps can all be nice and smooth under the quilter's ruler.  The ruler and the rotary cutter are in the middle.  To the left is a lint roller for picking up tiny scraps.  In the upper left are the growing piles of trimmed scraps, sorted by size, 1+1/2", 2", 2+1/2", 3 etc.  There is also a wastebasket on the floor handy for dumping pieces too small to use.

As you can see, I keep scraps right down to 1+1/2" square.  When I finish a project still on the go with the blocks made from the 1+1/2" bin, I'm going to up the smallest size to 2".

The trimmed scraps then go into scrap boxes labeled from 1+1/2" up to 4"+.  Ready to use at a moment's notice.

This is not my own idea; I got it from Bonnie Hunter.  If you google her, you'll find quilting ideas galore.  

Because I use her system of organizing scraps I was able to grab a bag of 2+1/2" squares and a bag of 3" squares just before leaving to visit #1Daughter last August.  She had to go to work each day, the week I was there, so I used the daytime hours to sew.  By the time I came home I had enough blocks made to put this up on my design board:

These blocks are called "Split Nine Patch."  I got the instructions, again, from Bonnie Hunter's blog.

Yesterday our local quilting club met.  I had been looking forward to spending the afternoon and evening there.  I really enjoy the fellowship of that group of women.  And I spent that time sewing these blocks together into a quilt top.

But now that I look at this picture, I realize I need to make another six blocks to fill in the right side of the quilt and make it a mirror image of the left.  Often a picture of a work in progress will tell you something that just looking at it will not show you.  That's what happened here all right!  Glad I have more ready-cut scraps to quickly make another six blocks.  Glad I noticed that before I "sandwiched" and quilted this top!