I previously stated that one of my quilty goals this year was scrap busting. Having now assessed the state of my scrap bin, I think that may be an unrealistic name for what I might accomplish. These are just the little bits. I also have plastic shoe boxes of larger scraps sorted by color.
A word to the wise: never, ever take the lid completely off the scrap bin! All I wanted were the greens, as that is the
Rainbow Scrap Challenge's color this month, but everything else made a break for the floor when the lid came off.
While everything was on the floor I figured I might as well sort it. I bagged each color in two-gallon ziplock bags to keep them sorted and put all except the bag of green scraps back in the bin. I happily went to work making 16-patch blocks to deplete the pile of green.
I made more after I took this picture. The count stands at 35 now. I tried very hard to just sew strips together without too much planning. The color placement is very random and it's making me a little bit nervous about the final product. Maybe those olive green bits should have been left out, but they are not coming out now!
As these were coming together, I felt very industrious. Just watch me use up those scraps! That feeling lasted until I looked at the supply of green scraps at the end of the day and found that I had hardly made a dent. This led me to a few decisions:
1. I won't be busting my scraps this year. The best I can hope for is scrap mitigation, making the scrap problem a little less daunting. It is by no means going away! I may have added a few new green scraps already...
2. I do not have the patience to make crumb blocks out of little itty-bitty scraps. Just slapping strips together to strip piece these 16-patches taxed my patience.
3. I give myself permission to toss some scraps. I may toss them into a pillowcase to make a pet bed for the local shelter, but not every scrap needs to be saved. That mostly applies to small bits (see #2 above), but also to slightly larger bits in fabrics that I just don't like. I'm not sure how they snuck into the scraps. Presumably, they came from a project, but I just can't imagine why I would have put them in a project in the first place. I guess my tastes must have changed.
4. I really don't work well without a plan. Halfway through making these blocks I just couldn't stand it anymore. I had to sit down with EQ8 and figure out what I was going to do with them before I kept going!
I might tweak this a little, but I have a direction. I also have white on white scraps, enough of one grey from trimming backings, and small bits of red/orange/yellow. I can make this whole top without buying and cutting yardage and thereby adding to the scraps. I might possibly manage an all-scraps pieced back too. This might just be a net reduction in total scraps. Fingers crossed!
Oh dear, those 3 dark greens in a row in the block above are going to bother me now. How did I not notice before?
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