The Great Sort: How I Deal(t) with Scraps

During my blogging hiatus, I was still sewing.  Usually in spurts.  While renos continued, I could only set up my space for a bit at a time, and if I got to leave it up for days!! in a row, then it was pedal to the hardwood...

In February, I had vast amounts of space to myself to fill with nothing but a makeshift studio, conveniently located near the refrigerator and coffee maker.  Also, with extra plug-ins so I could stream the Olympics on my laptop while the fabric was flying.  And flying it was!  I took the rare opportunity to spread out over two floors and organize my stash, supplies and most importantly, my scraps.  This was an "in-progress" photo of the front room as seen from the dining room/kitchen "workshop" I'd established.

Indeed. Whatever you are thinking about this photo, I agree with you.

The process took awhile.  Several evenings.  But the benefits!  I had a "eureka moment" of scrap storage idea that is incredibly useful to me (steal it if you want to) considering my lack of space and cold, cash dollahs!  Yes, necessity invented this mother of a scrap system.

Yes, the blues are out of control, as are the greys....

Hanging folders from IKEA.  Plastic filing boxes. Twelve different sections.  I can see all my small scraps and still pick from many different colours at once. I can also remove an entire colour, lay it open on the table, and the fold it back up and "refile" it. Plus, pretty.  (Ok, I'm not really thrilled about the plastic part but the need to keep things portable, stackable, and dust-free trumps my qualms. I also make sure to allow my fabric plenty of time to breathe on a regular basis. )

My large scraps were pressed and folded and sorted by colour ( I use a 12- colour category system: purples, pinks, reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues, blacks, greys, whites, creams, browns, which is preferable to the old system of "stuff 'em willy-nilly into whatever container is closest").  Then I stacked them in a box with my baskets of various-sized squares.  Strings and selvedges also sorted by colour, in their own box. And then my stash, on comic boards, solids separated from prints. Battings, interfacings, etc in another.  To be fair, I do have a smaller stash than most - less than 150 yards on hand - with most of that earmarked for specific projects. I'm trying to get better at mindful purchasing, because let's face it, I simply don't have the money or the space, and fabric's only as valuable as it is useful.

Nope, this isn't all of it....

And now that everything is contained and organized, my space (which sometimes needs to be completely dismantled - hence the lack of shelves, no using wall space, and collapsible desk) looks like this.

Batting and interfacing box is actually kept in a different room...

And it works.

Scraps in action! Tiny tiny tiny....

Pouch for a swap

So does the scrap system.  And that makes me very happy.

Pouch for a gift.

Yay for tiny!

Organizing and inventory-ing

Yes, I know the proper form of inventory in this case is actually inventory and that there is no such word as inventory-ing but it amuses me. :-)

I have been wanting for  a while now to have a serious look at my stash. A number of people I read  keep a log of how much comes in and goes out - which is something I wanted to try. One of my goals this year is to use more than I buy and to whittle down my scraps.  So I hauled out my stash, every piece of it, and sorted, assessed, measured and organized.  I had estimated that everything, fat quarters and larger, would be about 100 yards.  I was wrong...  It was more but still quite reasonable, though given the limited storage space and budget I have, I wouldn't want it to grow much larger.

I pulled all my solids since I'm in the Simply Solids Bee and wanted to have an idea of exactly what I had and where my colour holes were... Turns out I had no pink.  Seriously? So I added some.

They're now in a box, sort of file-like, with my charm packs and a single junior jelly roll.

The rest of my stash I separated into colour. Ish.  I kept all my Lizzy House Peeps and Outfoxed together.  I still haven't decided what I'm going to do with it all but I'm also not ready to cut it.  It's a tricky bunch.  I also kept novelty prints in their own pile; I broke those down by type instead of colour. Here are my three piles:

They are all now neatly tucked back onto my shelf and I have a much more clear idea of what I have and how much of it.  Yay!!

As for scraps, while they are loosely organized, from less than an FQ to crumbs,  I still have some major work to do and I wonder how I'm going to track usage of them since they're, well, not worth measuring in any conventional way.  (I'm not calculating the surface area of each little crumb - are you kidding me? I'm not THAT crazy.)  So far, I think I might turn to weight.  I can whittle them down by pounds...  Can you imagine?  "Hey, gals! I dropped five lbs!" or "I couldn't stop chewing on my stash and I gained eight pounds!!" Heehee.

Stash at start of January:  134.25 yards
In since: 23.5 yards
Out as of Feb 5th: 25.5 yards (most of this on stuff I haven't shown you yet...)
Net: -2 yards

Stash count: 132.25 yards, unknown lbs of scraps.

And I made another Guild Bag, using the tutorial I wrote last week. :-)  Addictive!

Much happier with my zipper this time!

Wanted: A Clever Post Title

So if you think of one, let me know. :-)

The tree came down last weekend and my desk returned to its place in the corner, but along the other window this time, which has freed up some space.  I'm still in the process of getting organized but I'm getting there. Given that this new setup has led to long, uninterrupted stretches of sewing, I have taken full advantage.

My nephew's 2nd birthday was on the 5th and while I did give him a bunch of Hot Wheels, I hadn't finished the other half of his gift until this past Wednesday:  the bag to put them in.

See my oops? :-)

I found the paper-piecing patterns on Fandom In Stitches - totally free - and then I framed the results with a lovely little traffic print, lined it with the leftover solid from Seester's quilt and added two ribbons to act as drawstrings. It finished about 12x15".  He was thrilled. "Oh!  MAY-turr...!"  Happy boy, happy auntie.

The other advantages of gaining back the workspace is that I was able to cross off a goal by organizing my scraps.  I went from this...

...to this...

...and finally this:

Ooooh, that's one fingerprint-y desktop...

Neat and tidy. Well... they're contained, anyway.  I would like to organize further but right now, they're sorted by size. Crumbs and short strips in the orange bin, everything else sorted in large ziplocs, etc, in the white laundry hamper.

The sort also allowed me to do something I swore I didn't have time for...

I drank the kool-aid.

For the record, I don't do instagram.  I wasn't exposed to this virus through instagram.

Nope, it was y'all.

Within a two week period, it seemed that almost every feed in my RSS reader was throwing Scrappy Trips at me.  I'm not generally a joiner in the "everyone's doing it" sense (I still haven't seen Titanic, and don't intend to) but they were so pretty! And EVERYWHERE.  It was a bombardment; I was hiding in my "I don't have time" bunker but being shelled within an inch of my quilting sanity.  I came out waving my white flag. Of scraps.  That was my one rule for myself:  I had to use only scraps for these blocks.  What will happen with the back and binding? Don't know.  But for now, I'm pleased (and sickeningly shocked) that I made 36 blocks without cutting into yardage.  That's a sizeable dent in the old scrap heap, eh?

And then there's my first ever bee block for the Simply Solids Bee.  Never done a bee before but it was on my quilting bucket list, so...  Lethargic Lass asked for asterisk blocks - and they were much more fun than I thought they'd be; the fabrics she sent were different than what I usually use, too, so that was very enjoyable!  I threw it in the mail last week so she should have it soon.

Believe it or not, I actually got MORE sewing than that done last week and I have the iron-steam burns to prove it. But why spend all my projects on one post...?  :-)

Have a stellar week!

Organizing: Jewelry wrestled, fabric tackled

As I've mentioned, I've been on a rampage.  Cleaning, organizing, editing, revising. My space, my things, my life, my mindset.

I've made some significant progress on the first two. :-) ( I imagine I'll be working on the last two for eternity. As we all should be, really.)

My jewelry drawer has been a source of constant frustration for a long time.  I wandered into an aisle in the grocery store the other day and came home with some inexpensive ceramic dishes.

I cut into some leftover felt that I made (from the Scrappy Afghan that is no longer such - more on that another time...) to line them and prevent scratches.

Et voila!

Little tip I picked up from Martha:  Use spare buttons to keep pairs of earrings together.  Thread them through the holes and they don't get lost.  OR if you lose one, you lose both - out of sight, out of mind. :-)

And after seeing many organized fabric stashes around the interwebs, I finally bought some comic book boards.  Mini bolts.  Love them.

Yeah, this isn't all of it.  There are more mini bolts behind this stack and in the bin to the left...

And now that I once again know what I have, I used a big chunk to sew a spring top. (Coming soon to a blog that might be this one. :-)