Scraps...the word brings both joy and dread to my heart. If you craft at all, you have scraps. DH has wood scraps in his workshop, DD#2 is drowning in yarn scraps from her crochet projects, and I have fabric scraps, sooooo many fabric scraps. Sometimes I am very good about processing my fabric scraps immediately, other times I toss them in a bin and deal with them later. Later has come, and has been here for about six weeks. When I am far behind on dealing with scraps, I try to do a little bit at a time to get caught up. I can't just power through and get it done in a couple of days. If you can, that's awesome, but I can't.
I go through phases when it comes to scraps. When I first started quilting, I did a lot of kitchen sink type of scrap quilts. Mostly divided into dark and light, but aside from that, no rhyme nor reason on which scraps were used together. I love those type of quilts, give me a super scrappy log cabin quilt set in a barn raising setting and I'm in love. My family? They want a less scrappy look. I started doing color controlled scrappy quilts and those went over better. In fact, the scrappy quilts that go over best with my family are two color quilts, blue and yellow, red and white, black and pink, brown and cream, it doesn't really seem to matter which color combination I do, but if I stick to just two colors, I can get away with using any fabric of those colors and everyone is happy. I've had pretty good luck with all cool colors, or all warm colors with a neutral too. Since I love autumn colors, I still make a lot of autumn themed scrap quilts. Those get mixed reviews from the peanut gallery.
I don't keep very many of my quilts, most of my quilts are gifted or donated. Since I know there are all kinds of taste in the world, I just hope that whatever quilts I donate end up with whomever will be blessed by that particular quilt.
I even go through phases on what patterns I use for scrap quilts. One year it's log cabins, I went through a Flying Geese stage, and HST's are always a winner. Some years it's stars, QST's, or rail fence blocks. I like blocks that chain, and create a lattice on the quilt, so Jacob's Ladder, Carolina Chain and nine patches can be good ones.
I started with my scrap bin overflowing, more than twice than what should actually be in the bin.
This is my scrap bin right now, about half full, but considering I've actually refilled it a couple times as I clean up more of my sewing spaces, I'm pretty happy with that.
While I was cutting scraps, I used whatever I could in current projects, so a lot of what I was dealing with was used immediately.
The scraps I'm cutting to specific sizes are piling up. All the squares are sizes I always save, the rectangles I'm cutting are for specific projects.
When I am cutting fabrics I treat novelty scraps differently than say a floral or stripe. If I am going to pre-cut novelty scraps into sizes for I Spy quilts, my go to is 6.5" cut squares. I have a lot of patterns that use that size square, and even most large scale novelty prints do OK in that size. If I don't have a large enough size scrap to do a 6.5" square, my next choice is a 4.5" square. I don't use these as often, but I have made a few I Spy quilts with that size. I rarely use 5" squares for anything, but I do have a cat quilt partially cut out that needs 5" squares, so any cat fabrics I found were cut to that size. I have a pretty nasty allergy to cats, but several of my grandkids love them. You can see I have a big pile of novelty rectangles on the left, they are cut 3.5" x 6.5". When I'm done cutting scraps, I'm going to go through that pile and separate the fabrics into a pile of vertically oriented motifs, and another pile of horizontally oriented motifs. I want to make an I Spy quilt using Bonnie Hunter's Bricks and Stepping Stones pattern with the vertically oriented rectangles, then, with the horizontally oriented ones, I have a pattern in my head which I'm calling "I Spy a Brick Wall". I'm planning on using solid gray sashing for mortar, and with the addition of squares on some rows, I think I can get a good brick wall effect. I'm really excited about sewing that quilt up, and seeing if it looks as good in real life as it does in my head.
I had a big pile of 3.5" squares, but those are now used in one of the latest quilts to hit the design wall.
I had already assembled a few rows before I remembered to snap a photo, so the quilt will be taller than this. Yes, it's a kitchen sink light/dark scrappy, but sometimes I just have to, I love them.
I did notice several of my scraps would play together nicely, so I cut a quilt from those while I was dealing with them.
I sewed up all these blocks as leaders/enders while I was assembling the orphan block quilts. Now I'm sewing these up into quilt tops so they don't get added to the tote that has quilt blocks in it. I've still not started on the batting scraps, I think that project is going to get moved to April. DH added another scooter quilt to my to-do list, which is fine, I already had one mostly cut out, but now that I'm working on making another quilt top, I'm finishing up a few more projects that were hanging around, using all of these as leaders/enders for each other.
I did get a couple more quilts basted, but I'm still figuring out a quilt setup. My Janome had lousy timing to break, but then again, a machine breaking is never convenient.
This week I've got the granddogs, who I swear demand more attention than the grandkids! I enjoy having the dogs around, but it does cut into my productivity, I can only listen to them whine for attention so long before I give in. I can still work on cutting scraps in the evening, that will be DH's time to pet the dogs!
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