Hi, I am a newbie quilter so I need your voices of experience. I have finally begun to organize my stash and now have a large pile of small fabric pieces ranging from a few inches to about 12" wide. I can't bear to throw them out, and would like to cut them into strips or squares and organize them by color. I heard on Fons & Porter that they like to cut their scraps into 6" and 2-1/2" strips. Does this sound like a good plan? Or...are there better or easier options? I appreciate any suggestions. Thanks ahead of time for your help!

I cut a lot of 2.5 x 6 for scrap braid quilts and you can cut 2.5 x 4.5 and make split decision blocks.

I don't cut up my scraps. Because I never know what I am going to use them for in the future.

I would leave them whatever size they are and just sort by color until I picked a pattern and knew what sizes to cut them in.

If you want you can look thru the scrappy patterns at www.quiltville.com and see if there are any you'd like to start saving and cutting scraps for now.

Unless you know exactly what you're going to need in the future, you may want to wait on the scrap cutting. :D

Ditto

Bonnie Hunter's system
http://quiltville.com/scrapusersystem.shtml

I've been working on using up my scraps. I had a pattern in mind before I started. I did the first star quilt out of mostly 3 1/2 inch squares. That used up my bigger pieces. Then I cut the rest into 2 1/2 inch strips to add to my Spiderweb scrap quilt that I am currently working on. It is the pattern by Bonnie Hunter off of www.quiltville.com. I am in no hurry, I just add more scraps to my scrap container as I finish other projects. My Spiderweb pile of blocks is getting bigger but it doesn't seem like my scrap container is getting any lower.

Wow, she has quite a lot of scraps and her work is beautiful! My scraps would only fill one or two of her drawers since I am just getting started. It looks like I need to think this through. Maybe I should just cut strips as wide as possible and go from there. Thanks for the link.

I have some of my strip scraps in one drawer ~ for that day when I do a strip quilt. Then smallish scraps in drawer #2, bigger scraps in a tub (smaller than a FQ). Unfortunately, all of these are not sorted by color :? :shock: So I have to sort or paw thru when I work on a scrap quilts.

Also check out http://quiltville.com/, Bonnie Hunter shares her method of organizing scraps.