Wednesday, March 9, 2022

Leftovers



For the last couple of years I have been trying to empty all of my scrap bins, bags and boxes and if I have scraps left over after I make a quilt I've been trying to turn those scraps into blocks right away.  I try to have a block going for almost every size of scrap generated. 

I had a lot of five inch strip pieces left after I made a recent Churn Dash top so I made Horizon blocks for my growing collection. 

Any 5 inch width scraps that were shorter than required for a Horizon block were cut into squares if possible. I store these in a bin with a lot of different sizes of squares. 

Anything less than a 5 inch square was sewn into strips for a Coin quilt I will make in the future. 

I also sewed together what was left of the strip set ends after I made the recent Sixteen Patch and it's Spin-Off. Those will also go into a Coins quilt someday.

I used a lot of 5.5 inch scraps cut into squares for the Sixteen Patch Spin-Off quilt top.  Those left over 5.5 inch pieces less than a square were also sewn into a strip for...you guessed it...a future Coins quilt. 

Ok. My process for using leftovers does need to be perfected just a little. My 18 x 24 cutting mat is full of scraps left over from recent projects. Used to be that when that happened I would throw all of those scraps into a bag or box so I could use my cutting mat. Well, those boxes and bags as well as the bins of scraps kept by width are what I have been trying to empty the last couple of years. So, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to make it my goal to clear off my cutting mat and table this month and properly process the scraps. I will show you in a few future blog posts what I did with those scraps. 

And sew on...

 

6 comments:

Linda said...

Your methods of dealing with scraps always interests me. So easy for scraps to get out of hand.

Quiltdivajulie said...

A challenge I am sure you will conquer!

gayle said...

I love to see what you're cooking up with your leftovers!

Quilter Kathy said...

Love the photo of your cutting table, which looks exactly like mine does most of the time!

Pamela Arbour said...

I enjoy watching your process. I know you will get those scraps processed. It does take time but it is worth it. I am on a dedicated path to keeping mine cut up and used up. Not caught up yet but I have come a long way.

Ann said...

Your process is so effective. I throw my scraps into a bag until it's full then make Coin or string quilts to empty it. You do so much better making many different kinds of blocks based on size.