Committing to a cut size brings up the question "what do I do with a piece smaller than ...?" I leave them just the way they are. Anything smaller than half of a fat quarter goes into a plastic drawer, organized by color. When I need to make a table topper or other small quilted piece, or border an embroidered piece, I go to the drawer first. If the drawer starts getting full I look for something to make with the pieces.

I thought that maybe cutting them down would be a bad idea but honestly, I have a lot of fabric. So if I didn't have a big enough piece in my FQ scraps I probably would have in another set of FQs or some yardage. For now I will probably just fold them as well as I can and file them in drawers by color but eventually I may cut them down.

You could check out Bonnie Hunter's scrap system on her website (http://quiltville.blogspot.com/). I am working on a Tumbler quilt cut out of my scraps using her leaders and enders challenge from her blog(http://quiltville.blogspot.com/2015/...-tumblers.html).

cut into squares or strips by hand. It is still done now and then

I would not put a cut piece less than a FQ back with the FQ's . I did this once and was so annoyed as the smaller piece was exactly the colour I needed but it needed a full size FQ for the bag and it was too small. I had to go and buy more fabric.

I wrap all fabric that is at least a yard on comic book boards and put them in my bookshelves. For anything that is at least a half yard, but less than a yard, I cut the comic book board in half, wrap the fabric around it and store them in the plastic drawer units. Fat quarters are folded and stored in another clear plastic drawer. Anything that is less than a fat quarter I put in colored fabric bins in my 9-cubby shelf unit. All are sorted by their predominant color. Even the fabric bins are the colors of the scraps that are in them. Hope this helps. 😊

Donna

Small pieces are very handy when doing applique.

I use Joan Ford's method from her book, Cut the Scraps, by cutting the largest pre-cut possible and going on from there to smaller sizes.

I'm glad you're enjoying that Sizzix die ... I just reorganized all my FQs using that also... it's awesome!

Edited to Add: Here's Joan's website: http://hummingbird-highway.com/

No affiliation, I just like her methods! :)

Actually it turns out that the die doesn't fit nicely into my drawer so I'm just using rectangles of cardboard now. I thought I could do the dies sort of staggered where they overlap a little but it was a pain to get them in and out.

I usually cut leftovers into various width strips. When I have a container full then I make a string quilt. Just finishing one up now. And emptied the whole container so I can put a different project in it.