Moving on to Blue

You can't imagine how happy I am to have finished the portrait quilt top before the end of the year!  Yesterday I added the paint enhancements to the quilt and set it aside to dry overnight.  Today I'll baste the layers in preparation for quilting.

In the afternoon, I cleaned my studio.  Well, at least I swept the floor and emptied the trash.  I've been dropping snippets of the tiny strips throughout this portrait process so the floor was a wreck.  Then I decide to get an early start on my pledge to make use of my stash by color in 2009.  Note:  I didn't say "using up my stash"!  I'm MAKING USE OF MY STASH!  You may remember that I've designated January as Blue Month.

I store my fabric in a coated wire drawer system purchased at Home Depot years ago.  As you can see in the photo above, the drawers have become a big wrinkled mess over the years.  So I figured that while I'm focusing on one drawer (color) per month, I might as well get more organized in the process.

So I began.  One by one, I started ironing the pieces of fabric.  Then I cut strips from each piece.  (I'm going to do something with strips with the blues.  Another month, I may cut squares, etc., from another color.)  I arbitrarily selected 2 1/2 inches and 1 1/2 inches for the width of the strips.

 
The next step was to neatly fold the remaining fabric, ready to be put back in the drawer.
Hopefully, by the end of January I'll not only have a blue quilt, but also a neat blue drawer.  And by the end of 2009, I'll have at least 12 stash quilts, and all my drawers will be neat and tidy.  How's that for a plan?

Tomorrow I'll post my complete list of 2009 goals.  It's going to be a productive year!  Happy New Year to you...