NY Beauty, making fabric & strip set blocks...

I have not been able to finish my NY Beauty quilt for some reason. Something just kept nagging me about it and I finally decided it was the large square layout that I didn't like. I played around a bit and came up with something I like a lot better. I want to hang it in my house and this size works better for that than a large square shape would.

I think this is how I'll assemble it, but I still don't feel 100% sure....so.....I've packed it up and put it away until I can make up my mind. I'm not sure if I need another row on the bottom or not. I just need to ruminate about it a little longer.

In the meantime, I've started two new projects! I'm not apologizing or feeling guilty either, even though I have many UFOs that need to be completed. I haven't felt this excited about quilting in a very long time and I'm going to go with it.

I've told you already about the strip sets that I've been putting together. Thursday evening at my quilt group meeting, I was able to get 20 blocks assembled. They are now on my design wall and I'm pretty sure this is the layout I want to use with them. There are many variations possible, but that just may require another quilt (or two).

My husband came into my sewing room as I was putting these blocks up on the design wall and told me "he loves them!" He was amazed (and, frankly, so am I) how well all these disparate fabrics work together. I guess that's just the beauty of a scrap quilt, isn't it?

The second project I've started is again working with strips, but these strips are leftover from other projects and, thus, they are shorter than 42". I originally thought that I would make a "jelly roll race" quilt even though (1) I'm not using a jelly roll, (2) there are many (disparate) fabrics, and (3) most of the strips are pretty short. Once I got it done, and even though it's OK the way it is, I changed my mind and decided to use it as "fabric". I'm not sure yet which pattern I'll use, and this is where I could use your help/suggestions.  Got any good ideas how I could use this as "fabric" in a quilt?

I enjoy working with the scrappy strips because not being able to predict how the finished quilt top will look until it's all assembled keeps it interesting for me. As is fairly obvious by now, I have a pretty short attention span and I work on the slow side! :)) 

Take care,