Since I am unable to sew for a few more weeks, I decided that this would be a great time to sort and organize my fabric. I have a bad habit of cleaning off my cutting table after a project by throwing all of the left over fabric scraps into a plastic tote. When I walked into my fabric storage area the other day, I was shocked by how many totes were stacked in there and decided that now is the time to sort through it all.
Recently, I purchased a magazine called
Quilt your Stash!, and in it are some great projects from Joan Ford's ScrapTherapy program. The magazine is from the publisher of
Threads, and I found mine at my local WalMart.
In this magazine Joan Ford explains her 7 steps of quilting your way through your fabric scraps. She explains that she pressed and cut her scraps into three sizes that played well together: 5 inch, 3-1/2 inch and 2 inch. As you work through your stash, keep telling yourself it is 'okay to throw away.' I know, it's difficult for quilters to waste anything but my new rule of thumb is if the scrap is less than 2" x 2", I throw it away. Once you get your scraps cut in these manageable sizes, you can store them in shoe boxes or small plastic totes and by doing so you will have a lot more space in your sewing area.
After cutting, I am sorting my pieces by color, theme, etc. For example, I have all of my colors in labeled boxes and all of my 1930s fabrics in another box, Christmas fabric in another box and so on. It is so liberating to get these scraps under control, and I am now actually able to see the floor!!
To learn more about Joan Ford's ScrapTherapy program and her great patterns for using up your cut scraps click
HERE
I hope all of you have a great week and that you carve out a little time here and there for sewing and, yes, maybe even some time for reorganizing your own scrap stash.
Until next time . . .
Debbie
