It took hours and hours to sort all eleven unsorted 30 gallon (120 liters) bags of the 2.5” strips that I had.

A few weeks ago I showed them to you here. I knew that this year I wanted to begin to whittle them down, but found upon the first project, where I needed blue 2.5” strips, it was taking me a long time to get the strips I wanted due to the volume of strips I had overall.

So, as much as I didn’t want to, I knew that I NEEDED to sort them by color.

After two or three weeks, that job is finished! I have had quite a mess in my living/dining room for a while. The messy part is cleaned up now. I just need to find an accessible place for these bags as I use them.

The end result is this. I have things sorted into these colors:

• low volume - two large bags

• blues - 1 large and 1 smaller bag

• greens - 1 large bag

• blacks and grays - 1 VERY full large bag

• reds - 1 large bag

• pinks - 1 large bag

• oranges - 1 smaller bag

• yellow - 1 bag

• purple - 1 bag

• browns - 1 large bag

I also have a 2 small grocery type bags of strips that are sewn together in at least groups of 2. Some are much larger strip sets than that - as many as 4 sewn together - some even more - maybe 6? Mostly strips of 2, though.

Here is the bag of unsorted 2.5” squares either singles, doubles or triples, mostly. The singles will eventually be sorted by color.

Here is the misc. ‘stuff’ that either needs to be trimmed down into proper strips or made into hearts or given away to someone who wants to make hearts or crumb or string quilts. I’m undecided at the moment what I’m doing with that.

I’ve already put the actual trash into the trash - no photo.

When I found 2” and 1.5” strips, :( I moved them to their appropriate bags. No photo.

It’s a relief to have this project done.

It’s been a big one, and it was slower than I thought it would be. I guess I thought I could sort a huge bag in an hour. But it wasn’t nearly that fast.

Maybe it was 3 hours - maybe even four hours? I don’t know for sure but I wouldn’t be surprised if this whole project took me 40 hours or so to do.

I ended up moving to the table to work - part of a bag at a time. I started out sitting on the couch and trying to just sort, but it became too hard without the right space to work.

I then decided to take out several handfuls of strips at a time and place them on the table and then just sort. Once I finished that pile, I went ahead and put the sorted pieces in their appropriate bags. This meant I could stop at any time and move on to other things.

However…I left a mess all over the floor in my living room and dining room until I got finished.

I’m glad my husband was patient. I know that I was running out of steam at the end and am very relieved it is finished.

Now I have ample “fodder” for my 2.5” quilts without needing to sort through bags and bags to get what I need in specific colors.

I have breathed a big sign of relief and am mentally and emotionally ready to get going on these tops! I am going to have to put that readiness on hold a little while, but that’s fine. I’m compiling ideas.

My biggest challenge are these two bags - the bags with white backgrounds and something with color on that. These tend to be a bit wilder than simply low volume. But I’ll need to use up a lot of these as I have a lot of them!

So, that’s just being mulled over in the back of my mind as I go about my day. I did make something out of my lighter shirtings shown below years ago now - maybe over 15 - when I first started doing upcycled quilts. I may choose to do something like this for one of them - or a variation of it.

We’ll see.

Of course, I probably have enough to do at least 20 of such quilts with these strips.

I thought you all would be happy to know this little project is completed. I’ve been trying to get quilting done as well, so this hasn’t been something I did instead of working on quilts, but rather, alongside.

In case you are wondering, my 2.5” series stands at about 29. However, I’m not showing all of them to you yet in a nice little gallery due to the mixed up status of this series. I can show you the first 11, however. Here they are.

Starting at number 12, they might be unfinished so I’m not ready to show the whole series to date so far. I’m in the middle of trying to get the next tops quilted and patterns written, etc. Hopefully later this year it will be in a nice state of “continuing”.

Hopefully this is just the beginning of many more 2.5” tops for you all! I’m also finding it much easier to let go of tops based on my 2.5” strips as they just seem so much faster than the 2” ones.

I trust that this is at least a bit encouraging to some of you who were possibly disconcerted with how many 2.5” strips I have had.

Thanks again for coming with me on this journey!

Have a great day wherever you are reading this!

Be sure to check out what my sis has for you in the store here!

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