Declutter Challenge 2023- Day 17 - Fabric Scraps
We have just FIVE days to go. The finish line is in sight. I know we can do it.
I hope you have your climbing gear because today we are climbing Mt Scrapmore. Today’s the day we grab all of your scraps from all over your sewing room, your basement and your garage and any other place that you have been stashing them and see just how big Mt Scrapmore has become.
Now scraps happen. They are produced with every project we make. However, even if you love scrappy blocks and quilts, you just might have more than you can deal with.
Because with scraps it’s not just how much capacity that you want your scraps to occupy in your sewing room. It’s also about how fast they are leaving your space through scrap blocks and other projects.
So today's challenge is about establishing that space, setting yourself some rules for the future and decluttering all the excess.
First, think about many projects that you make a year. How many of them do you want to make from scraps? If you only make 2 or 3 of scrap projects a year, why waste your valuable space storing enough for 10.
First, do you even like to use scraps? If you don’t, there are plenty of people that do. You can sell or donate what you don't want. But you do need to find those quilters that want them so that the scraps don't linger too long in your space.
Where are you storing your scraps? This space needs to be easily accessible so the scraps can flow in and out. If your scraps cannot be easily stored and consumed they will quickly spill over into other areas.
Now I have made several videos about how I process my scraps after I make a quilt. But Remember today’s challenge is not about organizing your fabric scraps into a thousand projects. It’s about setting boundaries for the coming year, so that you have a balance between scraps being produced with the scraps being consumed.
Last year I changed the way I stored my scraps. I had tried buckets and baskets but I now limit them to these two drawers. In this drawer I keep the random scraps and I just dump them in as I find them. When I pull some out to process them, I often take the larger scraps that I don’t feel like making any decisions about and tuck them to this side. In this lower drawer I keep my strips in this tray and my solid scraps down here. It has worked out quite well in the past year. When I run out of my bonus block supply, I just grab a handful and make more.
And how many types of scraps are you making the effort of storing? In addition to scrap fabric, we have scrap batting, interfacings and fusible webbings. Is your space large enough to store every type? I realized that I don’t need to keep more than a handful of fusible webbing and interfacing. I can let the little bits go.
Remember just because you can make postcards from scraps, does mean that you will, nor that you will use 6 boxes full of them. And new scraps are made with every project so you’ll always be making more.
See you tomorrow for day 18, when we do a deeper dive into our batting scraps.
P.S. If I look a bit stiff in the video, it's because I woke up with some serious pain in my jaw. Seeing the dentist tomorrow.