I worked hard this month to get a lot of strips of fabric trimmed down to 1.5”, 2” and 2.5”.

These were mostly just leftovers from all the trimming of charity quilts that I finished in October. I decided to focus and not let hem pile up this year. Most of the time I actually save them and do them in January of the next year, however, I decided I’d rather not do that again. So, this is what I ended up with.

I will admit, however, that my trimmings were kind of boring, though. By them mostly just being leftover backings, it meant that a lot of them were the same fabrics. In the past I’ve had more of a variety of fabrics to trim up. That makes the work more interesting, if a bit more difficult.

I need to find some of my older bags of strips and mix them in with them when I go to use them up as these tend to be all the same different few fabrics.

I got these totals:
2.5” - 5.95 lbs.

2” - 3.97 lbs.

1.5” - 1.88 lbs.

With these added to my table - here are the totals for this year.

As you can tell by this table, I completely missed four months this year. May, June and July I wasn’t here - and I didn’t get back to scraps in August.

Just for a visual - here’s what I’ve done this year - the equivalent of this many Jelly Rolls! This year to date I’ve been able to cut up almost 28 lbs. This is equivalent in weight to this many Jelly Rolls or 2.5” strips rolls!

I will probably have a few more in November and possibly some in December. I saw that I have some misc. stuff in my sewing room that should be dealt with- (scraps) - so I will try to attack those then.

I have noticed if I don’t let them become huge bags, they are psychologically easier to deal with. It is just that they pile up so very quickly! I know that recently while making both of the quilts for the sick children’s auction, even though I started with a minimum number of pieces, I ended up with two bags of scraps that need to be trimmed down to usable sizes before I toss all the rest - either to Ewa or to kindling. We are now having to heat our home, so it’s time to use up all the paper and kindling type things we have been collecting. We could just recycle all these things but why send them to recyclers, if we can use them ourselves?

Maybe some of you are new here - but this is the fourth year that I actually kept track of cutting up strips like this. I did cut up before, but just didn’t keep track of weights, etc.

In fact, it was cutting up strips like this that made me start my 2” strips series of quilts. These are also the fodder for my 2.5” series. My 1.5” strips series is very small.

Here are four quilts I made from my 2” strips - just in case you are curious. None are recent. All are on the free patterns page.

Here are some of the 2.5” quilts I’ve made using these very strips I’ve cut up. None of them are recent, however. It’s just that these are things you could make as well. All are free patterns on the free patterns page.

I have more ideas. I hope to be able to get back into the swing of using up these scraps. In fact, I have 2 more started in my sewing room right now - using 2.5” strips. I’d like to make a few more of those before heading back to the 2” series.

Have a great day wherever you are reading this! Thanks for coming along with me on my quilting/sewing journey!

Be sure to check out what my sis has for you in the store here!

Here’s one of the beauties we have! This horse grazing quilt kit!