March 1, 2010

In case you missed last week’s Email Blast here is what I said about starting to organize your stash to easily make scrap quilts: 

 “Go through your home fabric stash.  Any piece that is less than ½ yard should be used for scrap quilts.  Sort the pieces by color, light and darks of any color should be separated too.  You will have many piles of blues (different shades, no more than 3 piles of a color) and likewise for each color.  Separate out pure whites, beige tonals, and light colored backgrounds that have bits of color too.  Next week I’ll give you the next step.  For some of you it will take weeks to just sort the fabric.  Put the sorts in baskets to get ready to cut.”

Now for the next step:

Go through the fabric you have organized in baskets and pull out pieces that are 1/3 yard or more.  Cut off 12” (1/3 yard) and start a new “sort” of 12” pieces by color and value (light, medium, dark).  If you have pieces that are “almost 12”, like 11” or so” include them in the 12” sort.

Fabric that is an odd shape, like squares (whatever size) can be further sorted by shape.  Unless you have a lot of these odd shapes then don’t bother with this step now.

Fabric that is less than 11” should be cut into strips.  I generally cut 1 ½”, 2” and 2 ½” strips and sort these by value (light, medium, dark) without regard to color.  You will have 3 baskets of each value and each size:
   3 baskets of light 1 ½”, 2” and 2 ½“strips
   3 baskets of medium 1 ½”, 2” and 2 ½“strips
   3 baskets of dark 1 ½”, 2” and 2 ½“strips

By now you might have noticed that you have a lot of one value (maybe lights) and not many darks.  You could be storing lots of red and pinks and no yellow and oranges, etc.  Most quilters lean toward particular colors more often (I am a pink/green person).  If you have a lot more of one color or value than others I will help you even out your stash next week and give you the last organizational step!

This week I received more email than usual from the Monday Blast thanking me for the scrap quilt information.

Your input is very important so please let me hear from you (short emails are the best).