I'm confessing here what I rarely have before......my fabric talks to me. It tells me when to cut, how to cut, where to store, what will go with it (sort of a best friends pact), even how large it wants to be after I get to sewing.
Too often I find that the fabric just didn't like sitting next to such-and-such on the shelf and wanted to be attached to this-other-one more permanently.
I usually start with a picture, a specific gift to make, a pattern I've drawn on graph paper, something I saw at guild, or just a need to fondle (seems that happens all too often - wonder what *that* says about me along with hearing my fabrics talk??!).
I cut and sew, and piece into rows, and then into sections, and then it often sits for a while until the fabric starts talking again. In that case, too often it doesn't give a hoot whether it's in a finished top or quilt, just that it gets to hug its friend in a UFO box somewhere. My mother never let ME do that with MY friends and beaus! But who can tell most of the time which fabrics are male and which are female, right?
When I'm really desperate to "just do something", I might open the "strip" boxes -- one for 1.5", another for 2", another for 2.5 ", etc. -- and start sewing strips of contrasting values together. And then those go into another box of "sewn-together-strips".... :?
And sometimes all I do is re-organize the stash. That's sort of where I am right now. The room is jammed full of fabric, tops, quilts and boxes for the soldiers and it's hard to get motivated for the narrow path through.
Jan in VA