Cutting up scraps - my ongoing project

Scraps. Scraps. Scraps. A blessing and a curse.

In 2016 I made a goal to cut up scraps - for 15-30 min. a day.  My scraps had completely overwhelmed me.  I had made literally hundreds of quilts to that point - the vast majority of which were charity quilts,  inherited scraps from another quilter and even brought some over from thrift stores in the states - as well as had been sent some.  (I no longer buy scraps - BTW - just yardage).

I did manage quite well for the first few months of the year.  I then stopped. Why? Well, it got warm and I didn't want to iron more than necessary.  Sometimes you just need to iron those wrinkled up strips before cutting them up.  I never started dealing with them again once it got cooler again.

This is what I did last year.

Since I failed so utterly in the later part of last year, I decided to "get with it" again this year. Plus, I had used up a lot of my 2" strips and needed to keep going on my 2" strips project - or at least I wanted to. Plus, I wanted to keep dealing with my stacks and bags and boxes of scraps.  Hanging head in shame here...I know, I know.

The problem is, also, that it makes quite a mess when dealing with all these scraps. It is easier to throw them in a bag and place out of the way. Cutting them up results in a lot of  tiny scraps, trash, and just in general, mess.  This box to the left is just the trash I've created in the last couple of days. TRASH. These are not scraps for crumb blocks or strips--they are somewhere else.

Each of us have our own personal "limit" - at which point we say, "Enough's enough."  I've reached my limit with these.  I'm determined to deal with these until I don't have them anymore. Let me show you what I'm talking about.  I could throw them out but the part of me that says "No - you didn't create this mess in a day, and you won't deal with it in a day - plus look at the potential" says, "OK."

Here is is: A good bit of what I'm dealing with. I'll leave the pictures BIG.  It helps you feel what I'm feeling!

This beautiful bag of scraps is left over from the quilt I called Show Off.  I love the plaids.  

I'm finally willing to show this box - you can kinda sorta see it under that pile of scraps.  I am getting there...When I get down to that box of scraps, I will feel like I've really gotten a handle on those scraps.

This pile has gone down a lot in February. Of course, I still have two more days to deal with some scraps - but I probably won't work from this pile.  I'd love to see this one mostly gone by the end of March. The box pictured above is in a different location - it is not "under" this pile.

I told you I had a lot.

This is my most immediate goal.  I'm going to try to get rid of the pile that is located int he pink plastic laundry tub by tomorrow night, midnight.  The rather large piece of printed fabric is leftover from the latest quilt top I've finished but not written about yet.

This makes it worth it, though. These are the resulting bags of 1.5" and 2.5" strips I have available for me to use.  The 2" bag isn't here because I'm using a lot them - and the ones I've just finished cutting up - well, I'm not showing those yet. Hopefully, I will on March 1 with a February strips report.

I will do my best to not let myself get in this mess again. This is supposed to be Daniel's bedroom. Right now there isn't room for a bed in here!

So, even though I've fallen off the bandwagon, so to speak, at times - and last year, I fell off completely...I'm back on. And I've got a new determination - mostly because of what I did manage to get done last year.  

The other plus is...I'm going through everything. It is like a deep cleaning - and organizing and putting things where I hopefully know where they are and can use them. 

So, I'll catch back up with later. I'm off to work on using up some of these scraps!