Peeking - Boxes # 1 and # 2

I'm still reorganizing my stash and, as promised, letting you peek into my boxes as I go.  Suspenseful music please......... Box # 1 contains:

Scrappy 9 patches, 130 of them, (4.5" finished). Now there's a story behind these silly things.

When I first started quilting (many moons ago) I overheard a prolific scrappy quilter (whose work I particularly admired) pontificating on the subject of cut squares. She kept stating emphatically that she didn't know how anyone could expect to produce quilts or be struck with creative genius without a supply of six inch squares to work with. Aha! I immediately went home and brutally attacked my stash of fat quarters (that's all I had at the time) and cut everything into six inch squares. (I can hear some of you gasping!)  Then I sat back and waited for the beautiful scrappy quilts to appear. Alas! Nothing happened. Eventually I realized my mistake -- there wasn't a single pattern I wanted to make that started with a six inch square component! So the six inch squares became my albatross and lead to other equally bad decisions I'm still dealing with.

I found a tutorial called Nifty Nine Patches and began using my squares to make them, still with no actual quilt in mind as evidenced by the contents of this box.

The plan to use these up?  The One-a-Day Quilt Along I found at Crazy Mom Quilts Blog.  I'm going to use Kona muslin as the sashing.  As these 9 patches were all made from pre-washed fabrics, I've washed some muslin to cut up.  The muslin is on my cutting mat, the 9 patches are stacked next to my sewing machine and the box has been flattened for recycling.

Now.... what's in Box # 2?

Scrappy half square triangles, about a 1,000 of them.  It looks like a thousand, but there may be more.  I haven't actually counted them.  They all need to be trimmed to 2.5".  Cringe.

This handful of trimmed HSTs is actually the first hundred.  I know it doesn't look like it, but trust me it is.  I counted, so there may be more than 1,000 to be trimmed.  The only way to get these darn things trimmed so I can use them is to have a stack by the cutting mat and make myself do some every time I go by to refill my coffee cup.  This is another example of the disastrous results of cutting all those silly six inch squares without a pattern in mind.  Not satisfied with one disaster, I proceeded to subcut a large stack of them into three inch squares (another equally difficult size to use, by the way) and then painstakingly drew stitching and cutting lines on them to make all these HSTs.

The plan to use them up?  First I've got to get them uniformly trimmed.  Then... a sawtooth quilt border perhaps.  A scrappy Depression Block quilt?  I'm open to suggestions.