Each time I walk up and down the stairs I am taking something quilt related up or down until my storage areas are organised. The general idea is that stash will be upstairs. However, the newly created boxes above are not stash as such. These are my scraps. Each of the boxes in the lower three layers is 28 x 39 x 15 and are mostly full, with a box for each colour and one for African fabrics. (Tells you a lot about my tastes!) . How can you gather so many scraps in exactly 18 months?!! The back box on top is temporarily full of unsorted scraps and the little one at the front is full of Kaffe Fassett scraps which is really good going as I have not yet made a Kaffe Fassett quilt!! ( There is a half cut out one downstairs though).
My question to you lot out there:
How do you store your scraps? ( and while you are at it - how do you eat your creme eggs?!)
I have read of people who before storing them, cut them into 5 inch charms and strips. Do you? How do you know what width you want your strips or do you cut at whatever width suits the scrap? Do you keep really small pieces?
And how do you store threads? I bought a Super Satchel Thread box which is a good box but the prongs assume the smaller spools of thread and if you store for example YLI machine quilting thread in them you waste a lot of space because the prongs don't accommodate nice rows of such threads. At the moment that box is housing the unsorted scraps and you can see from the last post that I took the inserts and created a shelf narrow enough to house just them. But because of the design of the inserts I have other threads just in the wicker baskets. I can't find any other thread racks other than wooden one which stand up. ( You can lay them flat but they are too wide for the cabinet.)
Photos on your blogs and alert me to look at your solutions with a comment please. Or just a quick comment.
I am sure that there is a new business waiting to happen in designing storage for quilters that actually all fits together!!
Talking of photos on your blogs, Erica posted her very traditional 10 year quilt that I asked her about here. Don't miss looking at it - its gorgeous and well worth the 10 year wait!
PS Does the Creme Egg 'How do you eat yours?' slogan translate internationally? For the record I gnaw the top of mine like a beaver and then scoop the creme out with my tongue. Yum Yum.
4 comments:
well, i don't like creme eggs, so I can't help there, but I mainly organise my scraps by size - usually cut into squares. Of course, there's a basket where stuff sits until I get around to organising it (i.e. until it's overflowing onto the floor). I also have a bin for really small scraps (smaller than 2.5" square, which is the smallest square I do) and one for strips (narrower than 2.5").
I've tried to organize my scraps by size. I make crazy-quilt-like blocks from the larger (2-6"'s). The really small stuff goes into my "ortwork" collage quilts. However, they've all gotten mixed up with my needing both large and small scraps for the "lake series". My system was large zippered clear bags that blankets come in.
Scraps larger than these are folded and stored with fat-quarter sized fabrics by color in a shoe organizing system. See these in the cupboards over my machines in "Studio South" on my blog.
I suggest that whatever system you use, that the fabric be placed vertically in it so you can at least see the folded edge when you open the container.
My favourite treat with creme eggs is to slip them into the middle of chocolate muffins just before you bake them - delish!!
Um, I bite off the top and then slurp the insides. Messy, but effective!
I, like you, wonder about cutting all the scraps into strips or squares--how do you know you won't need a larger piece for some future project? I put "foldable" pieces and fat quarters into plastic bins like yours, sorted by color. Smaller pieces go into plastic grocery bags. I was slipping the handles over a hanger and hanging them in a closet, but now I've got too many of them. I was considering just throwing them away, but since I started a Dear Jane quilt I find that I'm using them, so I won't be getting rid of them soon. Sigh. They just hang around on any available knob. I probably should go through them and at least sort them by color or something.
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