Storing Your Scraps

One of the challenges I think all quilters face is how to store their scraps. I wish I could provide the perfect way to store these pesky bits but the truth is, you will want to store your scraps the way that works best for you. But to give you some ideas, I thought I would take some time and share with you how I store mine. 

Keeping scraps organized I think starts at your cutting table. I have my cutting area set up so that organizing scraps is at my fingertips.












Right above my cutting table, I have these fabric buckets that allow me to instantly sort my scraps by color.








If you are not into buckets, Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts has made these colorful bins to store her scraps.  You can read more about them here.










And I saw these colorful vinyl pouches that I thought would be great to adapt for scrap storage.  Vera at Negligent Style even has a tutorial on how to make them.

I mean how cute are these?





Many fabrics are not easily defined into a single color, so under my cutting table I have a big laundry bin for the multicolored scraps.  I wish I had a better way to store these but to date, it eludes me.

I also have a second bin where I place all 2 1/2 inch strips. This prevents having to sort through all your scraps when you need a pre-cut size.




There is a third basket where I keep the scraps from previous projects or selected lines of fabrics.  Once I finish a project and I have a lot of leftover scraps, I will just put them all together in a storage bag to be worked into a scrap quilt at a later date.

I find I work through these scraps pretty quickly because all the color work is already finished.  I usually just need to add a few other fabrics to have enough for a project.

There are many scrappy quilters out there that like to store their scraps according to size.  I tried this for many years but I never seemed to have the right size scraps for the project I wanted to make.  Storing my scraps by color and keeping them as large as possible until I am ready to use them seems to work best for me.

Once my color coordinated fabric baskets overflow, the scraps go into larger plastic drawers once again sorted by color.

I love that I can pull out the drawers/colors I want and take them to my cutting table for sorting/cutting.






 

As I consider a quarter yard cut and smaller a scrap, I have four large drawers were I keep fabric that I can get folded and stand on end.

I try and keep these fabrics sorted by genre (prints, batiks, solids, novelty, holiday).





I also try and keep each genre of fabric sorted by color.  This makes pulling scraps so easy when you want to start a project.


And having the visibility of each fabric really helps when you are working on a project.







There is one precut size of scrap I do save, and that is 2 1/2" squares.  As I am cutting scraps for a project, I will sometimes go ahead and finish cutting up a fabric into these squares. 










I find these plastic kitchen drawer organizers work great to store these in.  

You can label the scraps with trimmed index cards or even colorful paint chips.  Each square fits perfectly standing on end.

While a  2 1/2 in square is the smallest scrap I usually keep, I do keep some "crumbs" (or tiny bits). However I only keep these crumbs in solids as I occasionally use them in improv pieces.

No fancy storage here - ziploc bags work just fine.

If you do want to consider storing your scraps by size, Bonnie Hunter (the queen of scrap quilting) has lots of information about doing so here.

Getting your scraps organized makes using them so much easier!  And speaking of using them, I hope you find some inspiration in my Scrap-A-Palooza  scrap series, where almost every month, a new scrap pattern is used to make a quilt.

Isn't it time to get those scraps sewn into a beautiful quilt!

Linking up with Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation and Really Random Thursday at Live A Colorful Life.