Thursday, January 5, 2012

Scrapping the New Year

While I'm waiting for solids to arrive for my Brrr! project, I started sorting through my scraps.  There's a lot of scrap talk going around these days in the blog world.  There's the Scrap Attack and the Sew Scraps Along.  I wonder if this is the fabric version of the new year's resolutions.  We want to be disciplined and good and frugal. :)  Whatever the reason, I'm all for sewing with scraps. I love it, big time.  But my bins were getting a little unwieldy.  Some advice from Carla came to mind.  She cuts her scraps into strips and squares of certain sizes, so they are readily usable at any time.
So I've been working on cutting my scraps into 2.5 inch squares and strips.  I also stowed a ton of random width strips for some wonky log cabins and whatnot.  I've left the larger scraps intact, since they are useful for small projects, like dumplings, but cutting the rest down really got my bins under control.
And it seems Carla is right.  I saw those neatly cut strips waiting there for me, and they needed to be made into something. And it was so easy to do, because they were already cut!
Back with more on that later.  I'm sure there are lots of fantastic scrappy projects on the horizon.  What about you?  Are you joining in?

8 comments:

Jennifer Mathis of Ellison Lane said...

love those little stacks of squares- smart cutting them as you go. I just cleaned out my scrap bin and am working on a ticker tape quilt. :)

Unknown said...

what great scraps! Your little piles are so pretty!!
I just used some of my scraps for herringbone bee blocks.

Molly said...

I love how pretty those blue and grey fabrics look together :)

Carla said...

Yea!! You go girl! Your project looks so intriguing, Alex. I started using the 2.5 squares that we swapped at MQG last month...so fun to add some fabrics that I don't have! See you soon.

Mary Anne said...

I have high hopes for serious scrap reduction in 2012 - wish me luck!

Vicki said...

Looks great! I like the blue/gray piecing, a lot.

I looked in a bin yesterday and realized I have *way more* scraps than I thought. I thought I had them all sorted out by color. No, I also have leftover 2.5" squares from my 9-patch quilts, and various baggies of scraps from I don't even know what. So yeah, I'm going to work on using them up. :)

Debbie said...

looking so good!

Rachel at Stitched in Color said...

I think you're right - the scrap projects and other goals to not buy new fabric are our version of "getting in shape". Haha, but more fun!