Reassessing the Scrap Situation

I started making some blocks in January when the color blue was announced for the Scrappy Rainbow Challenge. In February when the color pink was announced, I started work on a different set of blocks. By March, I was so darn frustrated digging though boxes of scraps to find the colors I wanted that I threw up my hands and set to heck with all of it. I finally realized that my time would be far better spent sorting the scraps that I've collected over the years by color.

For years I subscribed to the Bonnie Hunter Scrap User's System, dutifully cutting up scraps left over from quilts I'd made and cutting up more out of the scrap bins and feeding them into containers for squares and strips. It was and still is a daunting task. The sad part is that they seem to get used very little because it never seems to be what I need at the moment. I usually find myself digging around in the bins instead.

I have a lot of scraps. Like a mountain of scraps. Like multiple boxes, bags,  and big Rubbermaid tubs of scraps. The obvious solution is to simply get rid of them, but that's just not ever going to happen because I love my scraps too much. And people keep giving me more to get them out of their sewing rooms. I never turn down scraps. Sometimes I even buy them. It might be a sickness. 

So I settled on a different plan. The owners of quite a few of the blogs I've been frequenting lately sort their scraps by color, and I thought that was worth trying. So I bought 14 clear plastic bins from Walmart and started sorting. These bins are 15 x 10 x 9 inches tall; and I will tell you, it is astonishing how many more scraps you can store if they're laid out flat instead of throwing them willy nilly into a container. 

I started with two of these tall tubs full of scraps and worked my way through  three of the smaller tubs. I also sorted through multiple plastic bags of scraps, and a few more stacks laying around the sewing room.

One of those stacks were the ones I had gotten from Barbara. It got too hard to keep track of what quilts I was working on that used up some of her scraps, so I abandoned that idea and sorted them into the rest of the bins. I also took down the Page I had at the top of the blog called Barbara's Scrap Bag.  

I used these smaller open top bins to sort by color; and I had separate piles of neutrals, batiks, strings, multicolored prints, and crumbs that either went into plastic bins or other established containers in the sewing room. As the open top bins filled up, I moved the scraps to their larger bins.

I also had smaller piles of plaids, solids, Christmas fabrics and block parts that were dispersed to other parts of the sewing room. The block parts will either be seam ripped or chopped up to go into a Whackadoodle quilt. More on that another day.

I had an excess of blues, greens, and surprisingly browns, and purchased a couple more bins for those. 

I had the least amount of yellows, pinks, and oranges, which didn't surprise me; but the reds were also in short supply, which tells me I did use lots of those.

After the dust settled, I now have a lovely wall of colorful scraps, all neatly stacked inside and ready for use. I still have two more large cardboard boxes full of bags of scraps to sort, but I'll have to work down the  scraps in the bins first because they're full. Which of course is the whole point -- to use them!