About working with scraps for those that aren't so used to it...
In this step I'm faced with a number of issues, smaller pieces of fabric. Very similar fabrics and far more variety in my "blues" than in my aqua.
I've found I can only do a few sets at a time, 4 is probably better but I did 6 here. I've found that if I cut my QST first, it can be hard to tell which batch is which. I make my HST first, keeping them in the same order that I cut, which is the order shown to the left of the picture. Now that the HSTs are trimmed, I will do the X cut and clip the sets together and move to the next set of blocks.
With my dark and mediums, most of them started out as odd shaped/roughly fat quarters to begin with and they are getting smaller now. I'm cutting one strip of each width of each fabric, typically I'm getting 3-6 of any given dark/medium. I have a limited number of aqua, so what I do is I stack the aquas so they are each a different color. Then when I have the same dark/medium three times in a row, they each get a different aqua.
Sorry, not a lot of variety in the darks/mediums this round for a good picture, but I think you can see the aqua tones sorted up top. When I'm actually working the stacks aren't spread out like that and as soon as I post this I'm cutting those combos on the side!