Saturday, June 4, 2011

A day of stash management

was on the agenda for today. I have so many pieces of fabric I'll never use in a current/future project. Often have to ask myself WHY did I buy that????? Spending a lot of time sewing/quilting with Ann has opened my eyes to the "Scrappy World." No, I still can't make a totally scrappy quilt by just picking up strips/etc., but I am working on it. I can do "controlled" scrappy...guess that's a start?

Anyway, today I decided I needed to actually DO something with some of these fabrics instead of moving them from place to place! At Ann's on Thursday, I remarked there's a pattern I'd like to make but don't know what colorway--yet you guessed it, her remark was "well, scrappy, of course!" All day yesterday I thought about this. Can I really do it with some of these no-longer-wanted fabrics?


I started by pulling out the bins and started by cutting 8.5 inch squares...I needed 66 of them. Ummmm I've cut them with no repeats--ut-oh!!!!! The unused pieces went into an empty bin. I did use all one fabric for the co-ordinating fabric, so once again I have a "controlled scrappy" kit cut out.





I started with 5 bins full this size: (they were full!)







now all fabrics are in bins this size and I can actually find something!










well, all but this:




Now I need to figure out HOW to cut these into useable scraps??????

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks good. I am on the never ending scrap management whirlwind. I am trying Ann and Bonnie Hunter's method of strips/squares. I am also adding fat quarters. Yardage stays as yardage with a tag of how much is there, half yards are ok too. anything less than half yard gets cut to 18 x 22 FQ and goes in the FQ stack, the rest gets cut into strips or squares. I am doing 2.5 up to 6 inches, in half inch incriments. So far it is working but is VERY time consuming. I was going to be all gung ho and cut as the fabric became available but that is not functional for me at the moment. For now two lare totes are sitting but my cutting table and anything I want to cut up goes in there. I cut an hour each weekend while doing laundry...feels less overwhelming that way.

NEEDLEWINGS said...

Well, I am about to tackle and spackle walls, paint and add flooring to my studio! I shall be doing some stash management when all is done. Just need a handle on everything! Perhaps we should do a stash swap and then we won't be tired of the same thing any more. LOL

Anonymous said...

Swapping with friends is so much fun. I did this with a group of gals awhile back. We swapped strips of whatever fabric that we felt was "us" and what others knew us best for. We swapped 2 coordinating strips and then make blocks for a friendship links quilt. Was pretty interesting.