I am ridiculously excited to have finished this project! As a reminder, here is the before picture of my scrap cabinet:
And here is the after…
… which doesn’t look like all that much from here. But! Each of those white things is a drawer to organizer various sizes of scraps.
Shelf 1 (at the top), with 10″ squares, 2″ squares (my primary leaders and enders, and why the neutral 2″ box is empty), and some miscellaneous trims:
Shelf 2, with 2 1/2″ strips and some of the 3 1/2″ squares:
Shelf 3 with 5″ and 3 1/2″ squares:
And Shelf 4 with a pantload of strings:
To make the various drawers, I made this type of basket (only without the center seam - my fabric cut outs look like giant plus signs). The fabric to make the baskets I had in my stash and was just languishing (and is from 1992, so it likely wouldn’t go into a quilt because it’s just not really my style). The dividers are “stuffed” with Peltex and stitched into the basket sides. The Peltex makes them a bit flexible which is good for a little bit of movement, but can also make them look a bit sloppy. I don’t care because they are awesome. The sides of the baskets have either mat board (that you would use in framing pictures, and is fairly cheaper by the sheet at Hobby Lobby) or corrugated cardboard. The bottom of each basket has a piece of mat board to hold it firm. I might sew some small stitches to secure the cardboard in the sides in place, but haven’t decided yet.
Things I learned in this process:
- I have a lot more scraps than I thought. And I’m not done cutting - I still have darks, neutrals, and the warms to sort through.
- Clearly I need to do a string project sometime soon. I think it might be something like this one.
- I’d like it if I had more room to break out the colors further than warm/cool in some of the sizes but I had to work with the space I have.
- Throwing the pieces into these warm/cool piles is making me more amenable to scrappy projects, so it is working on my color sense. The real test will be when I finally make something with all these!
Pam I love your system! Everything is so neat and organized.
Exellent! You should check out Crazymom’s new book Sunday Morning Quilts because it is ALL ABOUT SCRAPS! So good.
I agree with Katie. Great job Pam. I love that you are taking control! You have me looking at my scraps lately and I am not pleased with my current system. I used to be but now I have outgrown it. It needs to be rethunk! (bad grammar for emphasis). Not sure I am up for all that cutting though. I have a bit more space than you do so I will have to think it over for a bit.
Great job cutting the scraps into usable sizes. You can use my triangle technique to make HSTs in different sizes and that will expand your scrap project horizons. What about an Ocean Wave quilt? Half of the HST being a solid or tone-on-tone and half could be from your scraps. It could be an ongoing project until you get it large enough.
yay!! I wish I could wrangle my scraps into something like this. I’ve been making tons of HSTs and setting them aside for a someday ocean waves quilt.. Love that pattern. It uses up a ton of scraps!
Congrats! Those containers are great. You’ve definitely got me beat-I’m still using ziploc baggies stashed in a drawer! I need to get more cut, though, to determine what kind of storage I actually need. I’ll be keeping your solution in mind, though…
Looks good but I think you need to paint the outside to look like the Tardis.
Love what you have done. I should follow suit! Who I am kidding, not happening anytime soon. Maybe when the move takes place
AJ
Love the basket! I made some just like that for my grandbaby’s nursery! They are so cute, and even I could do it
I also wanted to tell you that I do my foundation piecing for string quilts using coffee filters…they work really well!