scrap organizing continues

i have yet to sort and store all my scraps. this basket is leftover from the pile i was working through at the beginning of the year. 

but . . .

i am making progress and have a good system in place now, which feels really good. and while i may be backlogged on old scraps (i recently uncovered a few more baskets of them), i am doing much better at putting scraps away as i make them.

my new scrap drawer tower was working really well, but it was not letting me sort as thoroughly as i would like to. so i decided to get two more towers. i now have one each for solids, prints, and low-volumes. it takes up some space, of course, but i really like it! ideally, someday, i would like to have drawers like these built in under a custom cutting table. that would be so convenient!

here's the top of the towers, which sit side-by-side in front of my design wall, just to the right of my cutting table. i have a few baskets of various collections on the top, as well as some of my rulers. this is in easy reach of my cutting table, so its a good place to keep the rulers and makes it a snap file away scraps when i cut them.

the baskets on top contain old scraps waiting to be sorted, my small bonnie lass block pieces, my bigger bonnie lass pieces, and i think that bottom one is more scraps of some sort that need to be put away. i'm still finding things hiding here and there in my sewing room as i tackle different areas. the bonnie lass blocks are longterm, on-going scrap projects that i use for leaders-and-enders. it's really nice to have them accessible on top of the towers so i can drop new pieces in when i cut them, and i can grab them to put by the machine when i want them there for leaders-and-enders.

the top drawer of each tower is dedicated to my liberty + chambray scraps: (left to right) binding and chambray pieces in the solids tower, low-volume pieces, colored pieces. 

below the liberty top drawers, i have a drawer each for scraps in width sizes from 1" to 5", in increasing increments by each half inch, a total of nine sizes. i know this is more sizes than other scrap quilters keep, but i have my uses for each width and this is how i want to do it. it definitely takes up more space and requires more drawers, which is a deterrent for some.

2.5" wide low-volume scraps, mostly from "edna"

in each drawer i sub-sort pieces of the same width into these categories (left to right in the photo):

• crumbs - smaller than a square, but the right width for the drawer size
• squares
• chunks - longer than a square, but not a strip
• strips - length of the drawer or longer, so folded

 there are different uses for each type and reasons why i keep them as i do:

• crumbs can be pieced into scrappy strips
• squares are useful for patchwork and corner triangles
• chunks can be subcut into squares or pieced into scrappy strips
• strips can be subcut into squares, made into binding, and are useful for a variety of patterns, such as log cabins or courthouse steps

larger pieces can always be cut down to smaller ones when needed. storing them by size lets me know what i can get out of them in addition to finding specific sizes for use. pieces that are not in exact increments are rounded down and get stored with the closest smaller size. ex: 2.75" falls between 2.5" and 3", so would go in the 2.5" drawer. i'll cut as needed later.

as i begin to use these scraps for true scrap quilts, i may find my ideas about categorizing and sorting change. maybe i won't need certain sizes or categories. but for now, this is what i'm trying. i'm willing to be flexible and change course later on.

the solids scrap drawers, top to bottom: chambray, 1", 1.5", 2", 2.5", 3", 3.5", 4", 4.5", 5". 

in the smaller sizes, i'm able to put the strips in separate color piles. when they can no longer fit like this in the larger sizes, i separate the warm from the cool colors.

in the low-volume drawers i try to have the pieces with colors separated from the pieces that are neutral. i do this because i often sew with one or the other in a project.

these skinny 1.5" wide strips are thin enough i can sort by color family.

the 2.5" drawers have the most pieces, by far. it's just such a common, versatile size. 

more scraps that showed up

my room is so crowded that i was at a loss at first where to put these towers. but i stacked all of my project boxes in a corner, clear to the ceiling, which opened up some floor space for the scrap drawers. i need to clean out those cubby shelves next, which should make more room for further condensing the messes stored items in here. actually, i think maybe i'll move all my solid yardage and/or my low-volumes into these cubbies. note to self. 

this is where all of my solids scraps have been, mostly leftover from my kids' stella grande quilts. i just kept stacking them here on this shelf in loosely organized piles by similar sizes and shapes. but they don't look good here and aren't in a useful, accessible format. i have long wanted to make some scrappy solid quilts from them, but have been unable to wrap my mind around how to use all these various sizes. they're too overwhelming this way. this is one reason i decided to do a whole tower of solids. i think it's going to help me see what i have and decide how to use it.

i'm still not used to taking "before" photos of my messes so i can see the improvement as dana white suggests, but i did think of it once i got started with this shelf. if i had the real "before" photos from january, you'd see i've actually made a lot of progress in this space. it's still not pretty and is visually overstimulating, but it's a lot better than it was.

i was hoping to get the whole pile put away in one sorting session, but it turned out there were a whole lot of cuts too big for my scrap drawers. so, the biggest pieces are still here, but only in one pile now. and i was able to spread out some other crumb/mini scraps that were hiding in the back in the cleared space where they can be seen. i hope to get to these soon, too. looks better, right?

tackling selvages

my next organizational tackle was this bowl of selvages. i save all selvages for some future undetermined selvage project because i think they are so cute. they get dropped in this bowl close to my cutting table. after organizing all the scraps from my backing trimmings i decided it would look better and be more effective for future use if i folded and sorted these selvages.

after folding, i sort the selvages by color into these piles. once they're all folded, i'll layer them back in the bowl in rainbow order. 

all future selvage cuttings can be quickly and easily incorporated into the system.

i found this cute piece today and it made me smile because malibu is where i'll be going very shortly. more on that at some future point.

i spent a while working on the selvages, but didn't get all the way through the bowl yet. it's not urgent and is something i can come back to later. but any progress like this feels great!

 the room is looking so much better.

a clean room is much more inviting for working in.

it still has a lot going on, so much visual clutter because of all the open shelving. this is good for locating what i need easily, but doesn't make for a clean, calm-looking environment. 

i'm just glad to have it and to have it getting cleaner and clearer all the time.

party with the quilt back pieces

as i've been prepping my handwork to go, i've been entering my sewing room a lot more often than i have been the last several months. i mentioned it was a complete disaster because i haven't been using it and that i have been studying ideas for decluttering and organizing it. so as i've been in the room the last few days, i have been doing as much or more cleaning in it as i have been doing actual sewing.

each time i walk into the room to sew, i start with decluttering/organizing first. it's kind of addicting. i just want to clean it all! getting one space cleared motivates me to do the ones next to it or whatever else catches my eye.

saturday afternoon i walked in to do some machine quilting and my eyes fell on the mess of things stuffed under my pressing table. i got everything cleaned up spic and span in about 20 minutes, then i saw this basket on the floor next to it. when i'm done trimming the quilts, i grab all the trimmings of batting and backing and stuff them in this basket which is suppose to hold it until i can separate the parts and store them in their proper places.

only i don't ever get around to processing the pieces in this basket.

there are so many long strips of backing and batting all wadded up and stuffed in this basket. it's overflowing and looks a wreck. sort of like this photo does. it was supposed to be a picture of a big long strip of fabric and batting being separated from each other. that doesn't really come across with me using one hand for a photo and one to just hold, not separate, everything, does it?

i felt like doing this project next, so i started digging through the contents and separating the pieces. i considered immediately processing the fabric scraps for storage, but that would require pressing, because all the wadded fabric is wrinkled, and a lot of cutting, which could take hours or days. i only wanted to get the basket empty, so i opted to just separate and fold the pieces. pressing and cutting can wait for my next burst of cleaning mojo.

one of the helpful decluttering ladies i've been listening to, dana k. white, says to take a photo before you begin decluttering a space so you can see the progress you make. i wish i'd done that with the other spaces in the room i've recently cleared rather than just taking a finish photo when i have it looking nice. i decided to document this little project from the beginning for myself and to share. maybe it will encourage someone else to get moving.

i did not anticipate what a trip down memory lane going through these backing scraps would be! it was like revisiting the making of many of my quilts from the past nearly decade. (yes, it's been needing cleaning that long!) i'll add in some photos of the quilt backs so this isn't just a bunch of ugle scrap photos. there's a popular IG hashtag #partyinthequiltback celebrating all the fun things quilters do on the backs of their quilts. well, the hours i spent cleaning up my backing scraps felt a little like a party with my quilt back pieces. it's the kind of fun quilters have on a saturday night, right?

some pieces were skinny strings, some were massive pieces of backing, several inches wide and the full length or width of the whole quilt, which is several feet. i found this one (folded twice already) from my older son's "blue and orange wonky" quilt that will make a nice start on a different quilt back. i'm setting it aside to use on another boy quilt at some point, maybe for one of his kids someday.

sometimes when i trim quilt sandwiches, i don't cut the different sides apart from each other. i leave them joined at the corners, like i did here on "spare pennies."

these joined pieces don't fold nicely, so i had to decided where to make a cut now, then fold the individual pieces for storage. 

nicer for storing now. still so wrinkly! you can see why i decided to stick with the first step of separating and folding, leaving the pressing and cutting for later.

apparently when i trimmed "dreaming easy," i didn't even cut any of it apart. it was one big joined up piece still. 

 this is one of my favorite backs ever. i love a pieced backing, but i think my favorite pieced backs result from joining two large fabric panels with scraps or blocks from the front, like this. it feels more intentional and orderly, which my eye appreciates.

also, this quilt was completed in december 2015, by the way. i told you this basket has been doing duty and not been cleaned for a long time.

some pieces filled me with nostalgia and i literally cooed or exclaimed when i unearthed them, like these liberty scraps. i was like, "ahw, look! it's capel and mitsi valeria from 'liberty makes do!'"

this was the only bits of liberty in the basket. i think i'm generally good about processing the liberty right away because i'm either using it again soon or just because they're so precious and i make a point of saving every usable bit. i probably thought these strips were too small, but there was an inch there, so i did immediately trim these and add them to the scrap drawers.

and to my credit, there were a lot of quilt backs i've trimmed over the last decade that weren't present in this basket. sometimes i do actually put that stuff away. sometimes. but not all. in future, i hope to do all processing when i'm done trimming the quilt sandwiches.

some of the quilts had loads of leftover pieces, like grandma s's "groovy summer lover letters." 

big quilt, lots of scraps from those long quilt sides.

look, we're getting somewhere on this mess:

i'd say this basket is half empty, which is the optimistic view when you're talking about cleaning out something. half empty, not half full, is more encouraging in this situation.

one hour later: the batting scrap pile is getting bigger and the basket is slowly emptying. the stuff at the bottom was compacted (from being at the bottom), so halfway wasn't really halfway. but it's progress.

these two little pieces are very well attached to the batting and not worth unpicking. however, i can make them into small needle minders that are useful for my various handstitching cases. so i'll put them aside for now.

oh, the pieces from marmee's quilt - "penny patch 2.0, school pennies." the quilt i was making for myself, then gave to my mother to love her through her cancer, and got back in the end. very sentimental, lots of memories in these scraps. 

i found trimmings from each of my kids' stella grande quilts, all except for d3's "radiant suzy." there is a vague memory just out of reach of me processing those scraps for something i needed them for. or maybe for once i was good about separating the pieces and putting away scraps. if i find them in the scrap basket (which still needs to be processed), then i'll know.

there's a nice tidy pile of scraps from almost all of them. these could definitely be the starts for another quilt each. i like the idea of incorporating them in quilts for my children's children someday.

so much has changed since these quilts were made and this picture was taken eight years ago. another eight years and there could be a whole lot more people with more me-made quilts wrapped around them. so far i have 2.5 grandchildren, 1 grandchild quilt complete. what will happen in the next eight years? my children could have one each at least. it's a little mindboggling to consider.

i kept finding little pieces of d3's "star cookie" i made when she was four. as i found them i kept texting her photos. she was so thrilled. there are plenty of ideas we're floating for how to use these.

mainly she's just interested in having them for herself. fifteen years later she's still quite attached!

these scraps are actually a mystery because i used the exact same side strip on two different quilts. 

it could be from "star of the circus" . . .

. . . or from "valoe." 

hard to say since i used this strip on both of them. actually, thinking it through as i type, i bet it's from "valoe" because the reason i had it to use on "valoe" was that there was a large piece still left over from "star of the circus." ha! mystery solved. i definitely used the trimmings from "circus" on the back of "valoe," so anything further left would be cut from "valoe." in the end, it came from both of them, didn't it?

this is another type of quilt back i like to make: a large strip down one vertical side and several coordinating cuts stacked horizontally to fill out the rest of the backing. it's another pieced backing that has some order and polish to it.

some strips i found were quite narrow. for these, i lay them out on the cutting mat and cut off anything narrower than 1" wide. then i folded the strings up and put them in the 1" scrap drawer. in this case, processing is quick and makes sense to do promptly.

oh heavens, look at these gems i found at the bottom of the basket, haha. one of my girls must have made these totes out of plastic shopping bags with fabric scrap string handles. how fun. the clear one has all the scraps from "love all around" rolled up inside.

two hours later and i have the whole basket emptied, all the fabric scraps folded and semi sorted into piles by size.

there is so much fabric here! i did not anticipating it ending up this big. i could make a couple more quilt backs from these scraps alone.

in fact, while i was working on this project, i thought of a fun quilt idea: a scrappy top with all my solid scraps and a backing from all these backing scraps. wouldn't that be fun? i need to come up with a plan for how to make it not just a great big, jumbled, hot mess, but i have some ideas for that already. let's add it to the wip list!

just looking at the batting pile. the large pieces i folded up and put back in the basket. the smaller ones i bagged to use for stuffing.

the fabric pieces filled up a whole basket. these can now be processed for scraps when i'm ready. it's a lot more organized, accessible, and neat looking than the mess that was stuffed in and spilling over that round wicker basket.

the pressing table corner of my room is looking so much better! i can see floor and no crummy mess. everything is contained and neat. there is still a ton of visual clutter in the room because it's all open shelves storing a bajillion different items, many of them small. but when everything is stacked neatly, it looks a whole lot better.

what's next for my declutter/organization spree? i'm looking at this basket under my sewing table that has more fabric scraps in it. i've got my eye on you basket. i'm coming.

a liberty sweep

this could have been a post with lots of pretty fabric pictures if the light in my sewing room was nice. but it's not. so these aren't very pretty even tough the fabrics are. sigh. someday! someday when i have my new house built and a sewing room with glorious natural light everything will photograph much more prettily. until then, on with the discussion.

i've been organizing and cleaning in my sewing room (which i'm so grateful for regardless of the current light quality). most recently i tackled my shelf of liberty of london tana lawns (top shelf in photo above). i have lots and lots of liberty bits which needed some more stringent order than existed. folding was sloppy and the quasi system i had in place wasn't functioning.

so i pulled everything off and began sorting by print. one of liberty's nicest qualities is that their classic collection prints are continuously reprinted in new colorways. i love this approach to fabric production

poppy and daisy print variations and the mini version

i ordered several small plastic boxes that i had previously used in my kitchen pantry to use for fabric organization, sized 3 x 6 x 10. i wanted to use them for all my fabrics, but they turned out too small for fat quarters or folding for file storage, so i decided to see how they did for the liberty pieces.

i generally buy liberty prints in fat quarter/quarter yard sizes or smaller. the way i've been using liberty, i don't need a lot of any one print. if i really like a print and think i'll use it more than that, i get more based on how much i like it. i also have several one yard cuts of prints i really love for use in backings. mostly i buy the same dozen or so prints that i really, really like. or so i thought! today i found i have a whole slew of one-off prints, far more than expected. but i do have plenty different versions of my favorite prints, too.

all boxed in for storage

once i had everything either in a pile with it's mates or in the one-off pile (except for a few color palette bundles), i began sorting the prints into boxes. some i had enough of the one print to make use of a whole box and others i grouped in a box with very similar prints. 

poppy and daisy got it's own box along with the mini version of the print, as seen in the photos above. so when you see the stack of boxes on my shelf, that's what's in them.

i did keep three color categories together regardless of print because i have plans to make quilts from these. they are: fall colors, pastel w/ neons, and red, white, and blue prints.

the fall bundle is sitting atop my pile of one-off prints that's nestled in between the boxes (for some structure). the one-offs were too big for a box of their own, but they're doing fine here between the boxes. the clear boxes make seeing which print family is inside easy. 

some of the other print collections were also too big for a box, like betsy (and betsy ann, the mini version). i have more betsy than any other print. it sits to the far right side of the shelf atop some cuts of chambray that will be used with the liberty for future liberty + chambray quilts.

moving left from the betsy pile past the boxes we come to the milk crate basket that used to hold all my liberty pieces in one place. it now holds my liberty quilting cottons and the other two color palette bundles for my future quilts. the neon pastels actually came together from, i believe, the alice caroline shop. nope, just looked and it's from duckadilly. both are great liberty sources. 

far left is a pile of my favorite prints also too big for a box but not as big as the betsy stack: june's meadow, capel, mitsi, katie & millie, flower tops. i try to keep each print in rainbow order to make locating one easier. it mostly works.

 aside from everything on the shelf, i moved all the scraps from my liberty + chambray quilts into a drawer in my new scrap tower. there are all the chambray 2.5" strip pieces, the flannel binding i've used on all the quilts, some random joined pieces scraps, and 2.5" strips from previous projects. this will come in super handy when i make more quilts in future. working with liberty in all the same size each time (well, two sizes, actually) really helps me make use of the scraps. it makes cutting a lot easier, too. i just cut 2.5" or 3.5" strips every time and i know they will always get used. 

i have also put all the pieces for my liberty christmas quilts in this basket.

that's my liberty swept up and sorted!

i think i accidentally put away the pile of prints i was using for my liberty courthouse steps quilts, which is a shame. i only have two more rounds to go on those and now i'll have to make new selections all over again. might not be too bad, but it was already done and i undid it. cleaning up does have it's consequences and casualties sometimes. if i'd put them together in a box or basket rather than just a pile before, this wouldn't have been an issue. but here we are. doing my best and moving on!