I've been thinking a long time about how I wanted to wrangle my scraps. In fact when I was at my mothers many years ago I had sorted her fabric into yardage versus scraps. She passed away several years ago and so I inherited this sorted fabric.
I'm currently in the process of making a quilt almost exclusively from her fabrics. It uses a lot of 2 1/2 inch wide strips so I finally decided to attack her scraps and get as many 2 1/2 inch strips as I could from her scraps and then 2 inch strips and then 1 1/2 inch strips. For the smaller pieces I've been cutting varying sizes of squares.
I will see how I like this process as I work through it with the current quilt and see what is left. I will have to choose another quilt to make from the scraps to really know if this is going to work for me. If I like it I will adopt the practice for my own scraps or at least the parts I like.
After session 1:
After session 2:
It does take quite a bit of time but if I cut scraps down as I go it will be more manageable. I'm currently using photo boxes to store the strips.
Swooze
A well organized, and time-consuming process. But through it all, you will be intimately aware of all of the fabrics to be used. Happy scrap wrangling to you!
ReplyDeleteWhatever you make will be that much more meaningful because it's from your mothers fabric. Hopefully it will be therapeutic to go thru the process of using and cutting, sewing the whole bit. I am very lucky to still have my mom but she is 84 and I know she will be leaving me in the near future. She has been an avid quilter for 50 years and has an enormous stash. I think I would be overwhelmed taking it but then again I would want it to be used and loved and petted as she does. I think simple blocks sewn together to make cuddly lap quilts would be the way to go.
ReplyDeleteIt takes time, yes. But I've found that if I do it as I'm already cutting other stuff, it doesn't seem so bad. And . . . the bonus is, when you go to use the pre-cut pieces, the cutting is already mostly done and it speeds things up so much -- so it's time well spent.
ReplyDeleteWow, I wish I had the energy to sort out my stash scraps. Each time a get into a new project I get to digging through all that only to think.....just get organized......well done Swooze!!!!!
ReplyDeleteI have a selection of scraps aka Bonnie Hunter's recommendations. Sometimes I can pull a quilt from them but not very often. My new plan is to separate the scraps into colors. I have a couple of big bags of just odd ball scraps and I find myself turning to the bags when I need small fabric pieces. Issue for me now is what to put them in without buying any more containers. I'm looking forward to reading how this works for you.
ReplyDeleteGood for you to get started on the scraps! I don't have much of my Mom's stash because I continued the tradition of raffling a quilt between the siblings at Christmas. My Mom started doing this a long time ago and after she died I would finish her UFOs, orphan blocks, and scraps to make a quilt for Christmas to continue on the tradition. Now that Dad has died and there are family issues - it's a long story) - the tradition has stopped, but her scraps are almost gone. Now my scrap pile - well, that is a different story! Oh, I have boxes and bins of scraps and it is all too good to toss. Since I have vowed to try and not to buy any more fabric the scraps will be in line to be used one of these days.
ReplyDelete