Watson

I realized that I had boxes of fabric, organized by colour that I wasn't doing anything with because they were such random sizes/shapes. I went through each box and took out all the pieces that were fat quarter or bigger and then cut up anything that would go into 2 1/2" WoF strips and then chopped up the rest into 2 1/2" squares.
I bagged the squares by colour and am going to do a scrappy quilt with part of them, so I took some from each bag and tumbled them in the dryer for a few minutes to mix them up and then put them in a tote bag so that I can just pull them out and sew them together at random. The bagged ones, I plan to do a quilt with a colour wheel effect.
At least now I can see what I've got for larger pieces of fabric and the odd shaped pieces are cut into useable 2 1/2" squares.
Watson

Quiltwoman44

I know you are organized now but aren't you tired too? All that cutting would make my back and neck hurt, not to mention my hand/arm. Glad you are now on the way to more quilts!! organized ones!!

tlynnc

These sound like fantastic projects!

Onebyone

Good idea to keep the organized and useable. I find I use up more scraps for strip piecing. It's fast and not a lot of precision in cutting the strips is needed. I found 5 1/2 papers that go between meat/cheese slices at Dollar Tree. 100 for $1. I can use even the smallest fabric pieces on these. Easy to trim the squares to 5 ". It doesn't take long to have a pile of strip squares. Also the $1 Dot to Dot paper pad is excellent for paper piecing It is like tracing paper, thin but sturdy. Easy to tear and printable. Look and feels like the expensive paper piecing papers to me.

sewingpup

I used Bonnie Hunter's tip of using old phone book pages for doing strip piecing, I use a smaller stitch and it actually rips off easier than other papers including bought foundation papers.

Onebyone

I used Bonnie Hunter's tip of using old phone book pages for doing strip piecing,

I have a horrible time getting the pages out of phone books. Waste too much of my time. How do you do it? I use to get free ends of the paper used to print Bibles from a local publishing company but it closed. I would never tear out printed Bible pages but it sure is good paper.

Synnove

If you hold onto just a few phone book pages at a time and pull gently from top to bottom they should come out ok. You may have a slightly ragged edge on the side that was bound, but that shouldn't hinder you from using the page for string piecing. Another possibility is just to use your rotary cutter with an old blade to cut the pages out.

And good job, Watson, on cutting up the scrap stash! You will be amazed at how many quilts can come out of just a small pile of scraps.

cashs_mom

Two words: exacto knife

SusieQOH

Another idea is that paper they use in bakeries. When my youngest was in college he worked at a local grocery store in the bakery department. I bought a bunch of those sheets and they are great for foundation piecing.

toverly

That's a good project. I need to do that. I have kind of started with my 30's fabrics. My last project with them, I held out pieces that I could not get a 5" square, cut them down to 2 1/2 and 1 1/2 squares. I'm not a strips girl. I have often wondered about sorting by color. Do you like it? Mine are by theme right now, batiks, 30's, solids, red white and blue, ect.