I was shocked that sewing the first batch of triangles made so little difference to the contents of that drawer. So the pile of pastel and modern fabric triangles were dealt with next. Another sewing session resulted in some more stacks of HSTs....

but the drawer barely changed. I quickly discovered that because most of these triangles are leftovers from bindings, our own and hundreds of customer quilts over the years, that the light triangles disappeared pretty quickly. I cut about 200 from creams and white strips and tackled the remaining piles.

Surely that would be enough!

Nope.  Now I could put this away and be done with it, but really? How many HSTs were lurking in here over all?

I paired up medium triangles with the darkest darks, cut more lights and back to the machine I went...

To the ironing board!

By now I was slightly appalled at where this was going. Understand that I have a 1 1/2" drawer, a 1 3/4" drawer and a 2 1/2" drawer of triangles as well. My reasoning has been that the set of little drawers takes up the same space empty as it does full, so I didn't have to do much more than tuck all those trimmed bits neatly away. I thought they might be a sort of 'starter' for a quilt someday but would only amount to two or three hundred. I have gone to this stash to pad out quilts I've been cutting for, but now I see that  a paltry 50 or so taken out every now and then wasn't making a difference at all.

No.  You can't really see how high these stacks are, but the final count was around 1,800 HSTs.

Gobsmacked !

For interests sake I tried packing them back in the little drawer and yes, they would fit apart from the bulk of the extra folds in the seam allowance. I'm now deciding whether to start an Ocean Waves or just sew them into blocks of 25 because they won't fit in the container they were meant to be transferred to. One little 5" by 8" drawer housed all that. I know that I cut extra light triangles, but all of these squares are made up of two triangles, people! Nearly 3,000 in that little drawer. 

It's made me think thoughts that I don't want to, about how many quilt tops I could make from the scraps that I adore hoarding, how many tops there are in my extensive stash, the number of quilts I can complete in the years I have left to me.... HEY! this exercise was supposed to make me feel better about the horrors going on, and instead I've spiraled into existential dread over my excesses in the sewing room. Hmmm.

And did I completely empty that drawer? Nope, I gave up. I call quits. I'd have to cut even more light triangles, and then I found this...

The little basket where I put binding cut offs, waiting to be trimmed. Argghh! I used to joke about the fairy tale where every morning there was a room of straw to be spun into gold. "I wouldn't mind if that was scraps I had to deal with, I'd just trim and sew away, and the next day there would be another lot! Tralala!" 

Well apparently I'm living it and it's not as much fun as I thought.....(still can't say no though, so I'm not throwing them out)