Oh Scrap!

Okay, I'm sure you all have your scraps sorted and ironed and stored in nice tidy containers separated by color, right? Or, you're more like me and have them all dumped into a couple of big plastic wastebaskets under your cutting table.

Pretty useless in this state of being, for me anyway.

I'm launching my own little experiment to see what can be done with scraps. Some of mine are a pretty good size, some are teeny tiny but still cute, and some only made it to my scrap pile because I was too lazy to walk the three steps over to my trash can and throw them away.

But here's the deal ~ all of that fabric cost money. Even if I got it on sale and only paid five dollars a yard, that means I paid five dollars a yard for my scraps too. Well, I don't know about you, but I don't want to throw them away unless I'm sure they have no useful life left in them. And even then, I'll probably turn some of those scraps into stuffing for a kitty cat bed or some such thing.

So, here's what I did first. I ironed my scraps. Yes, it sounds slightly insane but all the time I spent mentally convincing myself what a waste of time it was ended up taking more time than actually DOING the ironing.

Then I took my larger pieces and made either 2 1/2" or 1 1/2" squares. I put these in separate labelled containers so that I have them ready for patchwork. You can make patchwork pieces any size you like as long as you're consistent. I also started a container for 1 1/2" x 4 1/2" strips. (A little side note: I love 2 1/2" squares for a couple of reasons. One, that's the size jelly rolls come in so when there are leftovers, it's easy to use them in patchwork. Two, a square this size is perfect for piecing 1" hexagons.)

Even after weeding out the fabrics that can be made into patchwork squares, there are often teeny tiny pieces that seem too small to be useful. But stay tuned and you'll see the possibilities!

Hopefully, being a little more creative with what I have will help me with my upcoming Fabric Fast (more on that later). How do you handle your scraps?

And speaking of scraps....head on over to A Few Scraps. It's not too late to join in Christina's quilt along and learn a bunch of great stuff about free motion quilting on your home machine! Go check it out.