sandy l

I also have a bunch of "if I have to use this one more time....." fabric, so I'm going to bag it up and put it out on Freecycle, and it's usually taken by another quilter and/or a crafter the same day. Win,win for both of us

Rhonda K

I am not a scrappy girl either but save some for machine EMB applique projects. It bothers me to keep items that I'm not going to use so pass them along to others.

I recently sorted pieces of fabric that were perhaps half yard more or less. I don't consider these scraps. LOL.These were ruler folded on a five inch ruler and folded into 5 inch squares. These fit well in a plastic bin. It's easy to see colors and remove one piece as needed.

luvstoquilt

I am a scrappy lover and have been working on a couple of scrappy quilts. One is Pam Buda’s 1800 quilt. I have made over 600 9-patches for it (2 1/2”) and will be cutting out the setting pieces later today. The other is Sew Many Strips from BH&G’s last issue. I need to finish the border and attach it so it can get quilted. Here is the picture of it.

SusieQOH

I love scrappy quilts but I hate scraps. I know it makes no sense!
I donate mine. I really don't like looking at them or having them take up space in my sewing room. When I finish a project I never use them so off they go.

WMUTeach

Battle, you sound like an organizer! So, since you have your scraps sorted by color here is an idea. It works for me any way. I choose a color that pleases me at the moment and make a quilt top that uses just that color way with a background that I already have on hand. When I do this, I can see that bag, box or bin of that color shrink. Not a solution to the scrap abundance but it helps. Below is an example of one of my one color way quilts. I have another ready for quilting but not ready for a photo. This pattern is from the QB - Mystery Train Quilt #18. Lots of green scraps, lots of neutral scraps and one color for pop. All fabric even the back was from my scraps and stash. Quick, easy and top finished in a week-end. PM me if you can't locate the pattern. I have it book marked.[ATTACH=CONFIG]613307[/ATTACH]

Stitchnripper

I love scraps and have three big baskets of them. Not sorted. My last bunch of quilts have primarily been with those scraps. The baskets never seem to reduce in size. I don’t cut or sort til I work on something. Sometimes people will give me some scraps. I always accept!! Sometimes I am left with very tiny pieces and I don’t think I will make a miniature so I pass those along.

alikigirl

This is a great idea, my green and blue scrap bins are full so I will look for a pattern. Thanks

Jordan

I try and cut most of my scraps into 2 1/2" squares and just pile them in a bin then when I am ready to sew them together I have many so I don't have to cut any. If I can't get at least a 2 1/2" square out of the scrap it is tossed into the garbage can beside me.

Iceblossom

I work mostly in planned scrap quilts and have been working at reducing my stash. It is (the stash) fairly well organized in cardboard boxes (no problems with bugs here and they keep out the light) which are variously organized by theme or color. Everything fat quarter and larger goes into the boxes after being pre-washed, ironed, and ready to go. Saving the little bits and pieces was always hard on me but it was worse to throw them away because that's actually the size I really use. For a long time I used a hamper and just threw stuff in there but it was a horrible mess and unpleasant to actually go into there and find stuff and use it. So for the last several years as my fabric gets smaller I would cut it into strips of various sizes.

As time has gone on I decided I really don't want to keep anything smaller than 6.5" and that well yes, I do need some larger pieces of yardage I can cut down on a lot of the fabric I have by keeping by just having one WoF strip. My strips are kept in roughly color sorts, but I'm not necessarily using them that way -- for example maybe I want all florals or civil war or whatever. But they are pretty easy to handle and sort and store this way.

Recently I did a project and finally used up about 750 Y2K squares I've had sitting in my boxes for all these years along with some strips I had cut at 2.5". I realized from looking for ideas that I could spend the rest of my quilting life doing nothing but working with 2.5" squares! LOL some people might like that idea but it rather scared me and I decided then and there to get rid of all of them. So I packed them in a box and sent them away. I met a nice quilter here that does crumb quilts and happily accepts boxes of my fussy cut trimmings and smaller than 6.5" pieces. I keep a flat rate box next to my cutting area, depending on what I'm doing sometimes it fills up quickly and other times it may take a month or two.

Actual point is that life and quilting time is too short to be burdened by what we don't want -- and there is someone out there who wants whatever it is. Can be local or postage (and there are people here willing to pay for the postage), I gave away a lot of stuff through Craig's List. First to go was all the non-quilting stuff, it went to textile students at the local art college. Several bags including some UFOs and orphan blocks went to a church group who supported various groups. A bag went to the Girl Scouts. Boxes of craft stuff went to a public school art teacher, funding has been slashed and she was delighted.

And you can sell it via Craig's list as well. Last year I bought two 25 pound bundles of small pieces from a quilter's estate for I think it was $25 each, maybe it was $50. Mostly quality stuff from the early 80s. But the point is, they just took a picture of some of the box fanned out and someone bought them!

Yeah, I know, it's not much return on the investment but you don't really want them and they are taking up space that could be filled by something you want! That's called a lost opportunity cost, so really you are saving money

baywinds

Sharon, this is beautiful. Motivational too, I need to tackle my scrap boxes I keep for hand applique, but would like to make a bigger and faster dent in them. Thanks for posting this. Might just have to see if I can still get the BH&G issue today for this pattern.