Sunday, October 9, 2016

Scrap Management

I have not made very many scrap quilts nor am I good at utilizing my scraps, so over time my scrap bin has gotten out of control. I was forced to do something about it, just to make my sewing room a bit more tolerable. 

First thing I sorted my stash into piles by color. I was not too picky when it came to down to actual nuances of color like hues, light vs dark. Actually I did not have the patience for it. It was blue, green, yellow, red, orange, gray, black, brown and neutrals. A very broad categorization. This task itself took me a while and my sewing room looked as if it had been hit by a storm. Just the amount of lint in the room would make me cough and at one point I even contemplated wearing a mask. :)




After that I picked a color and started improv piecing like colored pieces together. It was like a jigsaw puzzle. Trying to find the right match to attach next. You constantly find yourself sifting through the pile for just the right scrap. Once the block got to a certain size, I would start another one. Even though this activity may sound relaxing in reality it does take a bit of thinking to fit the pieces together without cutting them up further. 

After making a few initial blocks I found that I did not like very large pieces dominate the block. I preferred smaller bits.  This way there was more interest and movement. So I changed up my strategy. If the piece was large enough for me to cut out 5"x5" square or a 2" strip I would cut those out, put them aside and work with what was left. This ensured that one fabric did not dominate the block and it had more movement.


I have made a bunch of blocks but not really sure what I will do with them. On the flip side I don't think I have made much of a dent to my scrap bin. This could just end up being a really long term WIP :)

3 comments:

  1. Love this! I adore this process but you're right, it does take a lot of work. Sometimes I let myself off the hook by just cutting a little bit off to fit it in the puzzle (otherwise I would go crazy). Maybe make a donation quilt in rainbow colors?

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  2. It's always worth a try whittling down those scraps, but no matter what I do, there's still an overflowing basket! ;-) What you've done looks great tho - there's just something wonderful about a scrappy quilt.

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  3. Good plan to get started on using up the scraps. Just make further blocks. In some time you will know how to finish them. Rainbow is always an option but depending on your amount of scraps just an organge (or blue or...) quilt sounds fun, too.
    :)

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