SCRAP ATTACK!!!

What Now?

After getting the nursery done, I pretty much lost my baby sewing mojo. I don't know if I was just tired of the color scheme, or what, but it was time for something else.

One of the things that as been on my "To Do" is to get my scraps under control. For the longest time, I looked at beautiful scrap projects and thought, "I am so new to quilting, it will be forever before I will have the kind of scrap stash it must take to make something like that." I would get dismayed when instructions said things like "pull a few scraps from your stash." For me, that meant a trip to the store.

In the meantime, I had a scrap bucket that everything went into. In my mind, there were't very many, so they didn't require organization. I could just pull something out whenever I needed it. Then one day, it was time to do that and this happened! Had I really made that many scraps?

Now, at this point did I immediately clean up my act and sort those scraps? Not a chance. Instead, I got a bigger bucket!!! Insert giant Cheshire Cat grin and accompanying husband eye roll here. Eventually, that bucket was also full to the brim and at this point, I had no idea what was at the bottom. It was time to do something about the scraps.

Information Gathering

It turns out there are a lot of different scrap sorting theories and approaches. I found reading different blog posts and books specifically on scraps particularly enlightening around this matter.

Sunday Morning Quilts

When I bought this book, I didn't realize that it was about scraps and scrap projects. Reading through it was really the first time I thought about scrap storage and organization. It was a total eye opener. I also realized that I had been putting things back into my stash that really should be in with the scraps.

Scraps, Inc.

I bought this book looking for additional scrap sorting insight and for the beautiful projects.

Blog Inspiration

One of Cynthia's beautiful scrap quilts.

Long arm quilter and blogger extraordinaire Cynthia Brunz has a great series on scraps, that I find really helpful for thinking outside the box when it comes to scraps. I also find it good for motivating me to think about actually doing something more than a coaster with them. You know, like a whole quilt!

Adventure!

Armed with lots of good scrap info, the plan was to tackle it during my maternity leave. Something that I could easily start and stop. The sorting plan to start with was pretty easy, just sort the scraps by color.

Then, about a month before Tate was born, I realized that I wasn't really equipped to sort my scraps in a way that would allow me to stop and start. Bugger. I needed a set up that I could transport and collapse easily without having to put everything away each time. Buddy and I headed off to the Container Store (his third favorite store after Best Buy and Home Depot).

On our outing everything that we found was either too big or too expensive for a short term project. At some point, something got mentioned about grocery bags and I knew we had it. I went home and started going through all the paper shopping bags I had, trying to find enough of the same size. There are a lot of color groupings, so I wanted 13 bags total. I guess I have also been collecting shopping bags for a long time because I had a lot of the small tote size. I cut the tops off and binder clipped them together and Voila! My scrap sorting station was born!

The half bags make for easy sorting. Added bonus, they fold up quickly and store easily in another left over shopping bag.

Mojo

Of course my sorting station couldn't go untested. I didn't want to be locked down watching a newborn and realize that my plan was totally flawed. So I grabbed that giant bucket and started tossing scraps in bins. Wouldn't you know it, before the end of the evening, I was DONE. Say what!?! I thought this was going to be a multi-day extravaganza. I guess you could say my sorting station was efficient!

Lots of Ziploc bags and a fabric bucket now hold my color sorted scraps.

I found that the blue and green bags were so full that I couldn't close them.

Not to fear, there is still much more that I can do now that Tatum is here. Next is sorting each color grouping by size. This is necessary if you are going to tackle a quilt so that you can easily pull out pieces that are big enough for your project.

However, there are a lot of projects that don't require that kind of sorting and I just happened to have one on my list waiting for my scraps to find some semblance of order. Using scraps and marking something off my UFO list? Yes, please!

Stay tuned, my next post will be about my finished Tinker Tote!