Scrap those scrap mounds
 

I don’t know about everyone else, but I have a habit of accumulating massive amounts of scraps. I’m cheap and just can’t stand to throw out even the tiniest scrap. My mound of scraps has become a mountain. Therefore I am challenging myself, and anyone else interested in joining me, to diminish my mountain by at least half by the end of this calendar year. If you’d like to join me on this journey respond to this post and post pictures along the way of your diminishing mound ( one growing mound if that be the case).
More to follow.

I will try to reduce my mound. I don't post pics but will be busy working on this. Good luck!

Until this year I was happy using January to use my scraps and make donation quilts. This year I was still sewing scraps in March! I have now decided to put my scraps in order at the first of each month. I cut them into strips and make "jelly rolls", cut smaller pieces into 1 1/2" x 5" for piano keys, cut squares. It has been only 2 months but it is working so far and next January I will be ready to sew, sew, sew for donation!

I started cutting my scraps into 5", 6", 7" and 8" squares last month... full time... and still going. Now instead of boxes, bins, and bags full of scraps, I have bins full of squares! I guess this is a little better. I do have more floor space showing. :)

I'll join with you to reduce the piles of scraps. We can do it!

I'm with you. It seems my quilt club always has another challenge to do which keeps me from my scrap pile. Even though I can almost always do the challenge with what I have on hand, it's usually from stash and not from scraps. I am on a mission to do something with all those scraps; really tiny ones, too.

I'll swear I think they actually breed of a night. I am working on three large tubs of scraps. Like you I can't throw anything away, guess that stems from growing up poor and still not wealthy in money by any means. I am cutting whatever I can blocks, quilt patterned blocks for a scrappy quilt laying out the strips an inch or more wide for later and then the little pieces I sew together and make a scrappy block and anything I can not cut something out of goes in a sack to make doggie pillows for animal shelter so virtually nothing goes to waste. So far I have about a fourth of a big storage tub down and I hope to have all three of them done before the end of the year so I am in on the challenge. Happy cutting everyone, Most of my cut scraps will go into quilts for our small guild who makes quilts for people who lose their homes to fires and for the children's hospital for the kids.

Sounds like I'm not the only one with unrestrained scrap piles! Here's what I've been doing. I figured out when my quilt club was doing a little monkey wrench block swap and I needed little HSTs. So I had a bunch of little triangles from making snow balls and similar blocks. I sewed those all along a long strip of the appropriate size and then cut them into the appropriate sizes[ATTACH=CONFIG]594613[/ATTACH].
I have done more strip quilts than I can remember, my favorite being a very irregular French braid type of strip...made a really cool quilt. Most recently I've been paper piecing
[ATTACH=CONFIG]594614[/ATTACH]Recently have also started using scraps for applique

I hope to finish sorting scraps by Summer's end. Way way to many. I did use older 3" strips last month. Made 4 NICU quilts for our MQG. No pics.

Yes, the scraps keep growing, especially when you share your love of string quilts at your guild and then are given bags and bags of strings!

I have sorted the strings by color and am using them up, but I have realized that I tend to keep the leftovers from quilts together after I have finished the project. So I have many little bags and bins of scraps that went well together and are now stored together. I think I need to dump these all out and sort by color.