This is where forever starts

In various quilting forums, cross stitch forums, not so much knitting forums, probably other artform forums I've heard people mention their forever projects. Now I can be one of the cool kids too! I've decided I want a postage stamp quilt. I'm not going to be anal about no repeats. Please. When I say forever I don't F.O.R.E.V.E.R, what I mean is a slowly growing, leader/ender, mindless sewing quilt that will actually get done at some point. 7056 one inch pieces will give me an 7' square quilt - 84x84. That's what I want, one little square at a time.

I have a rubbermaid tote full of scraps. Some are big chunks, some are the strips cut off backing before I bind a quilt. Some are treasured last little bits, quite a few are really, really ugly. But the deal is, if I can get a 1" square out of the piece, I will, and it will go in the little bucket. The only "repeats" rule is no more than 6 of a single fabric, unless I really love it, in which case I might add a few more. My quilt, my rules.

I started this grand adventure yesterday. I was sewing together the last of the 3 HST strips for the Lady of the Lake and came to a spot where I realized sewing off, instead of continuing the chain piecing I was doing would make my organized chaos a little more organized, a little less chaos. Being the frugal type that I am, instead of sewing onto a scrap (pull out threads and CUT them? Are you nuts!?) I could start piecing something else. I've done this before - I've had one quilt 1/3 pieced before finishing the quilt I was actually working on. But what? I'm still undecided about the colours for Phillip's quilt (think I've got the pattern in mind, though) so that was out. I don't do swaps, I'm not a tester for Quilter's Cache anymore... I've wanted a 1000 Pyramids quilt for a long time, but that requires more precision cutting than I was interested in.

I've always liked the look of antique postage stamp quilts. As I said, I'm not hung up on the "no repeats" rule, and in my book, the less restrictive the layout, the better. I think. We'll see. So I grabbed a handful of scraps out of the bin, and started cutting. Two bins - one for strips (maybe another log cabin?) one for 1" squares. That pile of scraps sure looked like more substance than the paltry remains in the two bins when I was done cutting, but at least they're more user friendly now. I grabbed a pair, sewed off my HST strip onto that little bit of cloth, and my forever project was born. This is where forever starts.