My Scrap System

So my buddy Cynthia has challenged her followers and fellow quilting peeps to a make something only out of scraps challenge.  Cynthia was over at my house for a sew day and told me she would never let me look at her scraps because I have a system.  We were chatting about this on facebook the other day and Felicity asked me what my system is.  So I told her and now I thought I would share it with you.  Because it works.  I think.  Just saying.  Here goes.  And I did not used to do this.  I used to just through the scraps into a cardboard box but this does not work at all.  It is just a mess.

First of all, my wall of shelves is the best.  My husband built them for my quilting stuff.  See the shoe boxes on the shelves?  Those are my scraps.  I have multiple boxes for certain colours like green, pink, blue, and yellow. I have one box for my I spy precut squares as well.

1.  I keep a basket on my table for scraps but it is not a big basket.  It is a small one. This is on purpose.  If it is small, then you have to deal with it regularly.  As pictured below, this is my basket and it needs to be emptied.  I call it fabric filing.

See that is my hand.  The basket is not big.

2) I use plastic shoe boxes to store my scraps.  Folded and pressed, the scraps are put away with folded scraps on one side and strings on the other for ease of future use.  The boxes are sorted by colour including white and I also have one for linen scraps, leftover binding and also my box of precut squares which are mostly 4" squares that are cut from leftovers or leftovers from projects.  I use 4" squares a lot, especially for baby quilts.  It is really important to put the scraps away neatly and pressing is important because that encourages their usage.  Really.  Don't skip this step!

3)  The box directly above is my precut box.  I organize the 4" squares by colour.  This makes it super easy to pull our squares for a baby quilt quickly.  Just above the precuts is my box of leftover binding scraps.  I don't cut 5" squares because I just don't seem to use them.

4) and this is what it looks like when I am fabric filing.  First the sort by colour and then into boxes.

5) The next step is making sure you use the scraps!  And that is why you should pop over to Cynthia's blog and check out her #scrapsonlychallenge!  Have fun!!!!