Open Line Friday-HELP! What To Do With Scraps?

109 responses to “Open Line Friday-HELP! What To Do With Scraps?”

1. If it’s really little scraps then I love this quilt for those – http://wonkypatchwork.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/quilts-of-christmas-past.html. And I’ve got good intentions to have one of these quilts on the go so I can just sew scraps directly on quickly and easily as I create them – but so far the good intentions haven’t come to anything! Loving lots of the ideas here too.

2. Some of your pieces are still usable for paper piecing projects. Also, you could just sew them all together in paper piecing fashion, except without the paper. Just keep sewing and trimming and adding pieces, sort of a collage form. You’ll end up with something beautiful!

   1. I love this!

      1. even though I am “older” quilter I love Bumble Beans from Victoria Findley Wolfe who is teaching young quilters how to piece new wonderful fabrics from all those great scraps (as in crazy piecing) and then put into quilt blocks…check her out! Mary in Texas

      2. I will look at Bumble Beans–thanks for the suggestion.

3. I too store things a la Bonnie Hunter…..but the bits that are less than 1.5 inch, and all the shavings from squaring up and chopping off the selvedge, plus the unusable bits of ‘de-boned’ shirts (the stiffened parts of collars and cuffs, heavily topstitched button hole bands) These get put in the compost bin. The worms seem to like them, and the garden gets more mulch

   1. Thank you! This is good to know! My daughter has a nice garden every year, and always want more things to compost. She just struck “pay dirt”!

      1. Quilters and gardeners are a natural fit!

4. I sew an old towel or a big piece of “what-was-I-thinking-when-I-bought-that” fabric closed on three sides leaving the top open. I have one by my cutting table, aka the dining room table, and I fill it with all my scraps. When it is full I sew across the top a few times to close it and donate it to an animal shelter to be used as a dog bed.

   1. What a great idea, thanks for sharing.

5. Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/all/diy_crafts/ and type in the words ‘scrap quilt’. I have many ideas blooming. Also try ‘modern scrap quilt’. Careful, this tip will take you down a wonderful rabbit hole.

   Also, I have a guild member who isn’t very affluent and she takes any and all leftover pieces. Every now and again I give her a yard of something I no longer love.

   Or, post on FreeCycle or CraigsList Free to get rid of anything you don’t want.

   1. I use every scrap I can and take in other peoples cast offs and unfinished projects to finish into much appreciated quilts for the kids in Guatamala. It doesn’t have to be pretty just warm and functional. I do try to make them as pretty as I can.

      1. How lovely, and I’m sure the quilts are lovely!

6. Hi Lori,
   I, too, accumulate lots of scraps although I consider myself as a “beginner” quilter who has only approx. 2 years experience. Recently I put one box of scraps on the table and started to sorting them in sizes. So far I made a dresden plate block as the front of my pillow case; made lots of half square triangles for the back of the pillow case. For these 1/2 square triangles, I’m still playing around the design, either pinwheel or just line them up. So this is part of the solution for my scraps. I’m sure you can find many ways to use your scraps, looking forward to see your scrappy design.

   1. That was a great idea to challenge yourself. Some of the most creative quilts come from limiting ourselves in some way! Love your idea!

7. I keep ALL my scraps – even those too small to even hand sew together because they can go inside small dolls and brooches that I make 🙂

   1. The question for you is…how do you organize all the scraps??

8. I just received “Sunday Morning Quilts” – it’s ALL about using up even your tiniest scraps, and how to organize them so that you CAN use them. I’m so excited to get started! https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=3pdGK3ZX5dsC&source=productsearch&utm_source=HA_Desktop_US&utm_medium=SEM&utm_campaign=PLA&pcampaignid=MKTAD0930BO1

   1. Thanks, Janelle. I can’t wait to check it out!

9. I’ll be glad to take them off your hands, lol!! I love playing with scrappy left-overs. I’m in the process of making a basketweave quilt (thanks to Bonnie Hunter). This is a pattern I used to start my granddaughter to sew when she was 6 years old.

10. String quilts? Crazy quilts? Also, crocheted rag rugs. I do that sometimes. You need 1 1/2 inch strips. for the rag rugs. Sometimes I make a matching rag rug for a quilt that has lot of fabric left.

11. Thanks for asking the question, Lori. The feedback you’re getting is wonderful. I’ve only been saving scraps for about 2 years and I keep them in 2 shoe boxes: one for strips and the other for “chunks”. But I have little patience for this and often discard my scraps.
    If you want to use up scraps, check out the stashbuster tutorials by Corey Yoder (aka Little Miss Shabby) at http://www.littlemissshabby.com/my-tutorials/

12. I have bins and ziploc bags that I sort by colour (canadian ah) It takes up way too much space right now so I have a mantra for this year. Its , The sewing room gets lean in 2014. the rules are that I have to finish a Ufo or scrap quilt before I can start a new project. Like many quilters I have several Ufos, and many of mine are scrap quilts to start with. My biggest suggestion is Start small like one block.The other very important detail is to have a continuity fabric, Something that pulls all the scraps together. That way it all looks like it belongs no matter what you use.

    1. That is a good tip.

13. An idea that I thought was great I’m not sure you will understand this but I will try to explain it, you cut your pieces to the same width the length doesn’t matter and join them together and just keep adding and role them up so when you have lots of roles you join them together and you have a quilt just like that!!!!! I hope you like my idea x

14. I sort by color order, and keep each color in it’s own basket. I’m amazed how often I need scraps for something small – a bit of this for a bee block, a bit of that for appliqué or even a test scrap if I’m having tension issues. Having them in color order opens my mind to new possibilities, like the lovely Sunday morning quilts book! Oh, I do keep strings in their own box, selvedges have a spot, and I keep unusable bits – tiny squares, trimmings, threads, skinny batting strips – in a big bag. I have the goal of making a doggy bed as someone suggested but now that I no longer have a dog, I have enough of these “shreds” (not scraps!) to finally make a dog bed. I’ll have to donate one, too! And would you believe, I even have vague plans for those tiny triangles cut off binding strips? At $10/yd you better believe I have a firm no waste policy for fabric!!

    1. I do agree, with fabric prices…we must be more careful with our usage. Miss the $6/yard days, don’t you?

15. A friend went to a quilt shop in the mountains of Virginia and came back with an idea for scrap triangles. The owner of the shop was sewing them to a 2 inch square to make square in square blocks. I thought this was a good idea and have been using them as a leader/ender project but with some modifications: I use my Beb Tucker Squared ruler to cut the centres more accurately and I make different size squares. I have most finishing at 2″, 4″ and 6″. I do have four that finish at 1″ – just because I could!, and four that finish at 5″ (these were a mistake).
    I showed a couple of pictures in a recent blog:

    http://www.heyeshome.net/?p=4518

    When you do a project like this you find out how many of your friends have “bonus triangles”! I’m thinking that when I finish the kingsized quilt that I might continue to make square in square blocks, some day they will be a border on another quill.

    1. Hi Helen, Thanks for the link to your beautiful blog. I can’t wait to peruse it further! Love your quilts. Do you quilt them yourself?

       1. Yes I have a mid-arm machine (APQS Lenni). I love being able to finish a top and then quilt it with out having to wait.

16. Hi Lori, I have been quilting and collecting scraps for ten plus years. At first I just dumped them into an open basket and pushed them down when the basket was full so I could fit more in. Then I colour stashed them in long narrow boxes, all shapes and sizes. Then I wanted to make a scrap quilt, using similar sized pieces, so began to sort into strips of various widths and squares. This I have found to be the best, as they don’t get too creased and are ready for use when I need them!