last minute gifts
December 17, 2021national quilting month
March 2, 2022Hello all, Mary Ellen here,
I’ll be glad to see the end of 2021. Hoping that 2022 will bring the end of all of our COVID travails.
I’ve started on a long overdue clean up of all of the fabric scraps I’ve saved. First I decided to throw away the small scraps that I thought I’d be using in paper foundation piecing. That made a lot of space in the 2 bins. I had originally divided the scraps into lights and darks–but I found that there was a lot of crossover. How light is light? How dark is dark? I now have them sorted by color–using the great big ziplock bags which I then put into the 2 bins. Novelties are in their own bag, black/gray in theirs, and browns in theirs. Do you have a good system for scraps? I’d like to get them organized into some method where I’d be more apt to actually use them!
A few years back I posted about a fellow who walked quilt designs into the snow. Here’s a National Geographic video of the same sort of thing. Some of his musings about his art would apply to quilting, I think. See if you agree.
5 Comments
I loved the Simon Beck snow masterpiece. Years ago, we had Bonnie Hunter come to our guild and she spoke about sorting and cutting scraps. After that, I started out by cutting different size scraps- 5, 4 , 3, 2.5, 2 and 1.5 inch squares and then strips separately. I followed that for a long time, but in the last year decided to do 2.5 inch squares , 5 inch squares, and strips. I do have them sorted by color, but when I put them in the bins, I just put them in on top. Then when I am watching TV, I will grab a bin and sort it out again. This helps because I usually am looking for a specific color for a project. I try not to let the scraps pile up, but, unfortunately, before Christmas I accumulated quite a lot of scraps from my projects.
How beautiful and then have it washed away
Thank you for sharing
Scraps I have a few, a few to many I keep thing one day I’ll do something with them.
Unfortunately inspiration hasn’t hit yet, there’s always this year
Happy New Year 🎊
I actually was going into my sewing room to sort and get rid of some of my “stuff” when came across your timely blog. I think I’m going to follow Sylvia’s advice and cut 2.5 inch strips and 5 inch strips and Mary Ellen’s advice to put them in oversized plastic storage bags. And then get rid of the “now why did I ever buy that “ fabric!! Come rescue me if I haven’t emerged from the room by spring !!
A while back I started cutting my mask scraps into 5 inch squares. They seem to be so versatile. I like the idea of sorting by color rather than darks and lights. I’ll keep cutting and see where it takes me. I loved the video and the scrapping ideas.
t Happy new year. I think we’re all making the same resolution, to clean up our scraps , ,throw out what we can’t really use and sort by color all the rest. sounds so ideal, but like the newspaper said today resolutions that are made fon January first usually don’t last until January 2. I hope that this resolution will take me at least until spring.
I had seen the snow sculptures when they first were printed years ago but they’re just as relevant now as they were then. Anyway everyone, have a wonderful New Year’sAnd I’ll see you all at the next meeting.