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Quilt Scraps.
If you’re a quilter, then you have scraps.
Sometimes you end up with more scraps on a project than you plan on. Ā And then the next project comes and you have more fabric scraps. Over time they grow and take on a life of their own. Ā And if you don’t have a plan for them, it gets overwhelming to have a stack (ahem, bins and buckets) of scraps taking over your creative space.
That’s where I found myself. Ā I had scraps in a basket by my sewing machine, two boxes in my cube storage, and multiple Art Bin containers full of scraps and unused fat quarters from a previous project. It was getting overwhelming and something had to be done about it.
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I decided to pause everything crafty and get to work on getting my fabric scraps under control. I had previously seen how Lori Holt of Bee in My Bonnet sorted and contained her scraps. Ā I adopted most of her principles as I set about sorting and cutting down my scraps.
She has an excellent YouTube video explaining her process here.
My Method for Scrap Organization
- First, pull all of the scraps I have together in one spot.
- Anything over a half yard – iron and fold, then store in a large 12″x12″ box.
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- Fat Quarters – iron and fold, sort by rainbow color and store in an Art Bin tote
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- Smaller than a fat quarter – iron and cut into strips or squares depending on how large each piece was. Ā The strip sizes I chose to do were 7″, 5″, 3 1/2″, and 2 1/2″
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- After cutting all of the strips to size, I organized them all by rainbow color, loosely folding them over to fit into Art Bin totes by size. Ā It worked best for me to sort the containers by size, but you could also do one container per color if that works better for the containers you have.
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Why specific sized strips and squares?
The strip sizes work well because they can be used for or reduced down to common quilting piece sizes. Ā For example a 7″ strip can be cut to the commonly used 6 1/2″ square or rectangle, or it can easily be cut into two 3 1/2″ strips which is also a common quilt piece dimension. Ā Obviously it can be used for anything smaller than 7″.
I didn’t want to save anything smaller than 2 1/2″. It might seem wasteful to some, and I struggled with the decision to not also do 1 1/2″ strips, but in the end, I didn’t have much left that could have made that size and scraps will always grow with each project and I had to be realistic on how many scraps I really wanted to keep and would actually use.
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All in all this project took about 4 days of work. Ā My bins still need labeled for sizes, but it has contained my scraps and made them more accessible for use. Ā I’m on the hunt for some easy scrappy patterns to use some of these up. Ā I love the look of this free pattern on Fat Quarter Shop’s website.
I encourage you to take the leap and get a handle on your scraps. Ā It takes away the mental burden of having them disorganized and scattered in your sewing space.
Happy Quilting! (and Quilty Organizing!)
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