Friday, May 13, 2016

Digging in the scrap piles, oh joy!

     I have no idea why I love scraps so much. I love sorting them, ironing them, cutting them and making them into beautiful quilt creations that give comfort. Fortunately, people give me scraps. My friends, the twins, that dynamic duo of quilters, just gave me a big bag of them. 
     My approach is to dump it on the floor (need to use a table from now on, getting too old for the floor) and sort. I pull out all strips, put in a pile, all squarish, all longer and folded fabrics and try to sort by shapes (the first photo).
     Later, I pull all the batiks and sort by shapes and bigger amounts as I keep my batik fabric separate from the regular cottons. I also keep solids separate. Then all the kids fabric goes in a pile. Leftover binding in a pile, and weird shape scraps in another, whites and similar in another. Then I take one pile at a time and iron and fine sort. Then I start to cut. I made a big mistake not buying an Accuquilt Studio cutter when it was on sale recently. Wanda told me about it and I balked because we were trading in a car for a new one. Now, the cutter costs $200 more and I can't get it. I think the cutter would have allowed me to plow through these quicker and have more time to sew.
    I cut my scraps- strips, 2 1/2", 2", 1 1/2" . Squares- 2", 2 1/2", 3 1/2", 5", 6", 9" and 10". Anything smaller than a fat quarter gets cut up. I store the cut pieces in plastic storage boxes, hopefully by color and value. Filing in boxes sometimes lags. When I make a scrap quilt, I pull the pieces out of my cut stash. Bonnie Hunter's system helped me. Need to find a better way to store the plethora of plastic boxes. 
    The more the variety of scraps, the better the quilts look. 
Table of presorted scraps by shape 
Piles unsorted- top left- childrens, bottom- batiks,
middle- larger pieces, top right- white and oddball shapes

3 comments:

A Left-Handed Quilter said...

You and me both!! I LOVE scraps!! I'm a bit behind on cutting mine but I sort them pretty much the same way you do - size/shape first - then by color. I separate out my batiks - solids - and neutrals. Then I cut strips - but I don't cut squares unless it's a too small for a strip - because I figure I can always cut squares from the strips if I need to. And, yeah - you need to get a Studio cutter - but wait until it goes on sale - and it WILL go on sale - just be patient - it will be worth the wait - ;))

Missy Shay said...

I need to sort my scraps, I am very haphazard in the way I do it.

Quiltdivajulie said...

Also check out the sizzix big shot pro die cutter (may not be exactly the right name) -- i have one and with a thin shim sheet I can use all of the accuquilt dies! Overstock.com is where I found mine for quite a bit less than the studio cutter. I love mine.