Last year I start cutting up my men's shirt stash into scrap user sizes, but I didn't quite finish. The backs of the shirts I left intact, but the smaller bits was what I cutting up. I had been putting most of the strips into an under bed bin, which doesn't fit anywhere in my sewing room! The strips fit in into it great, but then I had no place to store the bin. It ended up on the dressers I store fat quarters - 1 yard pieces of fabric. And of course, since that took up a good amount of flat surface space, I then piled stuff on top of that! My fabric room cannot be cleaned up overnight, I don't want to just cram things into impractical spots just to make it look tidier. I want it to function better!
After thinking it over, I decided to go ahead and cut up ALL of my 3.5" strips NOW, and they can be my leader/ender projects for the next year or so. I do a lot of subcutting in the living room, so I moved all the 3.5" strips into a bigger bin which is now in the living room. I put all the shirt strips I had cut into the drawers. It all fit, and now the under bed bin is in a donation pile. I like the scrap user system, and it works for me, but I really want to switch to mostly die cutting. The last two Bonnie Hunter mysteries I've done, I die cut almost everything, I didn't use the specialty rulers and cut that way, I die cut it, which is easier on my body. It's also faster, since there's no dog ears to trim. Now that I'm cutting up all of my strips at once, I needed to expand the four or so patterns I chose.
Sometimes I have several strips of the same fabric, other times I can barely get a square out of it. Some fabrics are solids or blenders, and others can't be categorized by any color because it's such a large busy pattern. The first thing I needed to do was some sorting. White on whites went in one pile, cream on creams in another. One pile for solids and blenders, and then came the harder part, sorting the prints.
For the prints I took a practical approach and sorted by how much of it I had. One of the patterns I chose needed 4 matching 15.5'' strips, so I needed two matching WOF strips for that one. Those I put in one pile, and I'm done cutting those strips. For another pattern I needed 2- 9.5" strips plus 2- 3.5" squares, so I needed 26" in a strip. Novelty fabrics I cut in 6.5" pieces if I had enough, and aside from those I cut squares and 2" x 3.5" pieces if I couldn't get a square. Really, if all you cut your scraps into is squares, there's still a lot of patterns you can use once you add some background.
When I'm doing bulk cutting like this, I don't count how many blocks I'm making. I don't want to waste my time counting. My policy is to simply cut the largest pieces first, then work my way down to the small stuff. Even when I start cutting the background fabric, I won't be counting, I'll cut some background pieces, and if I run out, I'll cut some more! This is where "It Is What It Is" comes in.
I'll give you an example. If I had several strips each of a couple blender fabrics, and they went OK together, I cut them into hourglass blocks. I put the strips right sides together, The first cut I make is with the EZ angle ruler, so I get a HST from that. I cut the rest of the strips with the companion angle template giving me QST's, then the last cut of the strip is another HST.
I've got some blue/green hourglass blocks on top. I made as many as I could, and ended up with 58 of them. The thing is, I can make a couple more blocks from the HST's I cut, and I'll do that. If I use 60 of the hourglass blacks and 61 alternate blocks, I can do an 11 x 11 setting and use all the hourglass blocks I made. I cut all my novelty fabric scraps into 6.5" squares if I can, so I can either use I Spy squares, or the 16 patches I've been sewing as leaders/enders lately as the alternate blocks. Would I normally plan to make a 66" square quilt? Probably not, but if it uses all the scraps, it's a win!
Underneath the blue/green hourglass blocks are some blue/gray hourglass blocks. I only had enough fabric to make 31 of those blocks, but if I match them with 32 other blocks I've got enough for a 7x9 setting. I'm just now sewing up the purple/white hourglass blocks, and when I'm done sewing and pressing them, THEN I'll count them. I already have a nice pile of purple/white HST's sewn, so if I'm short on hourglass blocks, I can fudge a few using HST's.
My scrap user system got out of hand because for a couple years I had so many deadline quilts and so little sewing time I didn't make any scrap quilts. Of course I made scraps with every quilt I made, so my scrap system just got larger and larger. The last couple years I've done a good job busting the scraps by cutting multiple projects at once, then using those as my leader/ender projects for the year.
Now, just to clarify, I LOVE making scrap quilts, they are easily my favorite type of quilt to make. If you don't like doing that, and your scraps are out of hand, try to find someone who likes making scrap quilts, or donate them someplace. I've bought many a scrap bag at a thrift store! One of the only things more fun for me than making a scrap quilt, is playing in someone else's scraps!
If you like making scrap quilts, but are just overwhelmed at the amount of scraps you have, here are my best tips for busting scraps quickly.
1) Now is a good time to toss poor quality fabrics. Scrap quilts are a lot of work, because you are handling so many fabrics. Let's not waste our time with fabrics you can read a newspaper through. (Yes I did toss some fabrics that were poor quality)
2) If you have a LOT of scraps like I did, choose a few SIMPLE patterns, no more than six, and cut for those. I'll give you bonus points if more than one pattern uses the same size pieces! I am cutting for multiple quilts that use squares. A laundry basket full of scraps isn't going to go down very fast if you are making double wedding rings from all the scraps.
3) If you have a lot of certain fabric, (for me, that happens a lot if I backed a twin with wideback, then I cut the extra into strips), can you use those as a focus for a quilt, like I'm doing with those hourglass blocks?
4) Don't overthink it! At this stage of the game, you are just making blocks, when the blocks are done you can figure out settings and how many you have. If you make too many blocks, you can make another quilt, or my favorite option for just a few extras, piece a row of extra blocks into a quilt backing. People use all different sizes of quilts, so make the blocks and let your scraps tell you what size it wants to be.
5) If you have a lot of one certain color, try making a two color quilt (or monochromatic even), or just use warm colors, or just cool colors. Scrap quilts don't have to use everything together. If you want a more cohesive look, it can be done with scraps.
6) Start cutting for the pattern with the biggest pieces first. If you cut too many, you can always cut some of them down for one of the other patterns.
7) If you are the type of person to always make a test block, make those test blocks from your scraps. If you chose a certain color scheme, you can easily make a sampler quilt from those scrap test blocks, even if the patterns are drastically different.
When I first started busting my scraps in a concentrated effort, I started out with simple rail fence blocks and color coordinated closely. You can see from this photo that even the monochromatic quilts still have character, even with the same color family fabrics and such a simple pattern. Scrap quilts don't have to be complicated, or time consuming, or use half background fabric. One of my pet peeves is a scrap quilt book where all the quilts in the book use 1/2 background or more, with just a sprinkling of scraps. The quilts in the above photo were ALL scraps, and they helped me whittle down my scraps of those sizes of strips quickly and easily.
This bin was full when I started sub-cutting my 3.5" strips, but now it's less than half full. In just one week, only cutting for bits of time here and there, I've already made a huge dent! I started with the harder to use pieces, and the more I cut, the more ideas I had to use the scraps. Looking at so many different fabrics really gets my creative juices flowing! I have an idea for the blenders and white on whites that should give a very modern vibe, even though it will be a scrap quilt.
There's a few things I love about scrap quilts, especially EASY ones. If you choose a simple pattern, the blocks can easily be made as leader/ender projects while you are working on other things as your main project. Since the fabric is leftover from other projects, it feels like a free quilt. Since they are scraps, I feel free to really use my imagination on the quilts, whether that means weird color combinations, odd background choices, reimagining another quilt design I've seen, or even going completely improv. If your quilt is a riot of color, it's a good place to use up mostly empty spools and bobbins of thread. Scrap quilts can also be a good place to practice a new FMQ design. You may not want to tryout quilting a new design on a wedding quilt you spent three months making, but an easy scrap quilt you made in a week? Experiment a little (or a lot) on it!
I'm sure I'm not the only one drowning in scraps, so I like to pass along some ideas now and then about working with them.
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