Sorting scraps

Hello everybody!

Sorry it has been a while. There have been a few reasons for this, all stemming from the global pandemic. One is that my Etsy shop has been booming, so most my sewing time is occupied by that. And being stuck at home with 3 small kids means I have much less time for crafting and hobbies than normal. But mostly it is because the pandemic has been like the effects of migraines that I talked about last time, but times 1000. I haven't actually felt able to do any EPP since lockdown started.
In good news though, the new migraine meds seem to be actually working, so my motivation and energy are starting to come back. I have been working on some more cross stitch, and I will do you a proper post about that soon.

One thing we have decided to do in lockdown is some sorting out to make the house more liveable and organised. And one of the jobs I have set myself is sorting my scrap box, which was overflowing, by cutting the scraps into usable squares and strips.

I thought this job would only take me a couple of hours, but I have spent two full evenings on it (about 3 hours each) and I am only just able to shut the box properly, so clearly that was a massive underestimate.

My scraps are small, and really weird shapes, as they are mostly the result of fussy cutting fat quarters. I buy very little yardage.

I already have a bag of 2.5 inch squares, which I am using for a scrappy snowball quilt, so I chose that as the smallest size to cut. Here's the bag - you might notice that it has been around for a while...

I am also keeping some 2 inch strips and some pretty selvedges. As for the rest I have been making squares sized 3, 3.5, 4, 4.5, 5 and 10 inches. This is partly to match existing precuts like charm packs and layer cakes. As things stand, I am only sorting by size, not by colour. There are probably a few too many different sizes buy I will worry about that later.

I am not deliberately fussy cutting, but where there is no loss of material to do so, I figure I might as well.

And sometimes, when I can't quite get a 2.5 inch square, but I can get a decent 1 inch hexie, I am basting it straight away and adding it to my collection.

Hopefully, once this is all done, my scrap collection will be more organised and a lot more usable. I am certainly feeling tempted to do some more work one the snowflake quilt. Here are the blocks I have made for it previously.

There's a bit of a mix of pure random scrappy blocks and some more planned single-colour blocks. I haven't quite decided how it will all fit together coherently. It might even end up being two quilts. Having lots more different fabrics ready to use gives me more options.

I have no idea if or when I will get round to using the rest of the scraps but there is certainly a lot more chance of me using them if they are neat and I have some sense of what they actually are. I also don't know quite how I will keep the different sizes of squares organised once I am done. I am open to any suggestions that don't involve buying anything or making anything too big.

Thanks for reading!