If you quilt, you create fabric scraps, and eventually, storing them can become complicated. Accumulation often outpaces use. This leads to the question: Save or toss? Most of us would hesitate to discard a half yard piece of leftover backing fabric, but what about smaller pieces? What size, type do you keep and why? It’s easier to use yardage, pre-cuts or even newly purchased fabric, and that means scraps pile up.
Every quilter has their own threshold for what to keep versus what goes in the trash. Last night I was texting with a friend who’s planning to move in a few months. She was taking a good hard look at her stash and making tough decisions about what to keep.
You can spend hours, if not days on end, watching YouTube videos and reading blog posts about how to sort your scraps, but space is finite. Eventually, you run out of room to store them no matter how much thought, and work, you’ve put into organizing. That realization smacked me in the face this morning when I walked into my sewing room and was thinking about my friend facing her own stash decisions..
Once again it’s messy! 🙄 It gets messy because it’s harder than it should be to put stuff away. It’s harder to put stuff away because there’s too much of it.
So, I’ll start with the two areas that only need a quick rearrangement to look better and then slowly make the hard decisions about things that need to go.
I need to make sure I’m only keeping what I’ll actually use and let go of the “maybe” and “some day” fabrics among them.
It’s better to have a clean organized space that I enjoy, compared to one where I’m hoarding so much fabric that there simply isn’t room to “put things away”.
Time to Quilt 
You have a great set up. I love the tool box with the wooden top. Great idea!
ps–I am convinced that scraps multiply in the dark when we are not looking.
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I think you might be right about the gremlins in the dark! LOL I wish they’d actually get some things done while I’m sleeping. 🙂 The toolbox was a birthday gift last year. I wanted one for quite awhile and when I saw that Home Depot had the 24″ wide top I got busy earning some good wife points! J/K about that part. My husband is a retired auto mechanic so if he understands one thing, it’s the need for the right tool at the right time, and a reliable place to keep them!
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good luck. I think many are going through similar processes so don’t feel alone! I’m passing through all manners of stuff and releasing things in trickles. I have three scrap quilts working from 1.5” strips. My epiphany was that I best get some yardage/stash quilts done too to make a dent there (insert laughter here).
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miss you on stashbuster
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Oh thank you! ♥ I’ll check in.. I think the only reason I’ve procrastinated is I know I’ll get so lost in the inspiration that my real world life will start missing me too! 🙂
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When the yardage came from the stash, the chunk remaining is smaller, even if just a bit smaller so it should fit easily back where it came from. Part of this issue is defining “scrap”. 1/2 yard? That will bind a twin size quilt so nowhere near a scrap from my seat. And yes, I know we all define scrap differently. The other side of the coin is not buying if a space hasn’t opened up and I know that you know this. You do so many scrappy quilts it feels like you are able to sew them all up.
My nickel of input. 🙂 You do YOU!!!!
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