Scrap organization

This week I did two things: work on organizing one of my scrap bins and worked on quilting a block or two of a really simple baby quilt.

The baby quilt is just 16 10″ blocks all sewed together. They were leftover from my summer quilt here. I found a large floral for the backing which frankly, hadn’t inspired me for anything but a quilt back.

For each block, I’m quilting a different design, working my way through Free-Motion Quilting with Angela Walters. When I need a break from the computer and desk work, I just move myself downstairs to the sewing room and quilt a block or two. That’s usually long enough for a readjustment. (mentally, physically) Although, one day this week I had a scheduled call and almost forgot to go back upstairs. I was just about to quilt another block but decided to check on work instead. Good thing I did!

I did quilt about half the blocks this week.

For the scraps, I lugged a big bin upstairs near my desk. For short break, I just wander over and fondle fabric for a bit. I mean.. carefully go through the pile and sort.

It’s a bit overwhelming but eventually I made decisions based on the kind of scraps I had – not trying to fit in someone else’s system.

Then I had to clean some up because the husband wanted to sweep the floor. Crazy guy. So I took some piles to the sewing room to sort further.

Turns out I have a lot of strips and some blocks. I tried not to trim too much, just to even things out. Anything bigger than a fat quarter of course was not a scrap. Anything slightly less than that I called a chunk and also set aside. I figured there was no point cutting up larger chunks into preset sizes if I wanted to do something else with them.

So, that left me with the rest.

I sorted strips into under 2.5″ to 1″ and short medium long piles. Medium anything over 12″, long was selvedge to selvedge or near enough. If I had to fold it to pile it on my cutting board, it was long.

I also had a pile for 2.5″ strips and a pile 3″ or wider.

For squares, I sorted two piles – 2.5″ or 3″ squares, then 4″ or larger.

Anything smaller than any of those was a snippet. If it was really long I placed it in a strings bag. The bag of string is going to my mom, because she loves making string quilts, and I don’t.

I have other fabrics sorted by color and felt for my scraps, sorting by size made more sense *for me* because that was how I chose fabrics for quilts – by what I had, not by what colors.

I did spend a large chunk of Friday and Saturday ironing and trimming scraps. It sounds a little obsessive but I feel so organized! And so ready to make a pile of new quilts, just based on what is there.

I even – oopsie – started piecing Scrapper’s Delight out of Sunday Morning Quilts.

My overriding goal here is to actually build a new stash by using up what I can with the stash I have. The stash is more a reflection of what was cheap / found in thrift stores & yard sales and stuff my mom didn’t want, to build up my stash. I just took some fabrics because they were cheap / free. A lot of it doesn’t actually reflect my taste, so. There we are.

(I will say I do have a drawer full of fabrics that are more reflective of my tastes, but I haven’t used much of them yet. That’s why most of the scraps are not really me – I used the fabrics I only sort of liked first, to use them up. And in this sorting, I’m ditching fabrics I really do not like.)

So… how about you? How do you sort and organize your fabrics? What do you do with your scraps?