My scrap user's system at work

Yesterday I talked about transitioning from a stressful time into a more relaxed time and how one sign of that change was a need to clean. Well, that and a sharp pain between my shoulder blades where that muscle is relaxing after 4 months of being knotted like a rubber band ball.

Part of cleaning is straightening up the sewing room and moving my pile of uncut scraps. These scraps are left from a period of creativity. When I'm being creative, I am not thinking about cleaning up scraps. So, they tend to pile up, no matter my good intentions to never let that happen. Then the pile falls over, and then they start to spill onto the floor and then I find a 1" wide by 4' long string caught between my toes as I walk through the house, like trailing a piece of toilet paper.

Following the FMQ challenge has left me ready to quilt. Not so much ready to piece, but I am ready to get something pinbasted and ready for some fancy machine quilting and I'm going to need the space where my scraps have built up.

So, I'm working on transitioning a pile of scraps that looks like this, left from shirts and all the quilts I've made this year...



Into strips and piles that look like this...

And, leaving all the wierd ends and points and selvage and serging in a pile like this that can go away.

Then, I store them in a drawer system (1 1/2" to 4" strips, sorted and ready to use)...

And, squares, 1 1/2" to 5" (I used to save 1" squres, but really. ya' gotta draw a line somewhere. I still save 1" strips in a large bag of strings, waiting for a string quilt.)...

So I can keep a box of stuff that's cut next to my machine to use as leaders and enders (the basket has a couple hundred joined pieces for a Texas Braid quilt)...

And, turn them into quilts like this, which came completely from my scraps, except for a few pieces of white that had to be cut from yardage.

Thank you Bonnie Hunter for introducing me to a way to handle my scraps. When I found Bonnie's method, I had two bins of scraps that were 12x18x24 and they were both chock full. Now, two years later, I'm down to one bin of untrimmed scraps that is 6x18x24. I knock them out a bit at a time, when I either don't know what I want to work on next, or I don't have the extended period of time that I need to do something like pinbaste a quilt. Sometimes, I'll take a whole weekend and just pull down the bin and trim.

One mistake that I made in the beginning was cutting scraps too small. I wanted to make the Irish Chain above and needed 2" squares and so I cut everything down to 2", so it's taken me a while, but I'm finally starting to get squares that are big enough to make a Linus quilt with.

I'm also getting to the point where I have a smaller stash, from trying not to buy fabric, and a bigger scrap bin and am looking forward to using that in my quilting. If you're thinking of starting your own system, or you're looking at a system and wondering why it isn't working for you, remember that it takes a lot of cutting to get your system off the ground, so don't get discouraged and don't think you have to cut everything down to a tiny square. We all use strips to piece quilts now, so leave some of your stash in strips. And, don't forget to shop from your scrap users system. The quilts you make from your scraps will be just as lovely as the things you made from the fabric originally, just with a lot more variety.

Take care and have a great Friday. I have big plans for the weekend. Lots of little things that want finishing...like this pile of scraps wanted finishing.

Lane