Sunday brought more rain, so I went back to the studio. But I didn’t end up sewing. It won’t come as a surprise to long-time readers… but I am very bad at properly cleaning up after a project.

I have a tendency just to move things out of my way, and end up shuffling a lot of piles.

As soon as I headed into the studio, I had the urge to do something about it. And even though I really wanted to sew something.. I’ve learned not to ignore cleaning urges. They don’t come along often, so I have to take advantage when they do.

One thing that really needed doing was the taming of scrap mountain. When I finish a project, I throw all the leftover fabric (anything less than a 1/4 yard that is) into a big basket. The idea is to cut it up into pieces and sort it into my scrap bins. Ideally, I’d like to do this at least once a month. But it usually ends up being about six months between cutting sessions. It was definitely overdue.

Happily, the world’s most handsome feline is always willing to keep me company while I toil. It took several hours, but I soon had every last scrap cut, sorted, and put away into their respective scrap bins.

It might be hard to see the labels, but the sizes I cut to are 2.5″, , 3″, 3.5″, 4″, 4.5″, 5″, and 10″ squares. I also have bins for 2″ strips, and 2.5″ strips.

These bins are where all my wonderful scrap quilts emerge from. My current Leader/Ender project actually depleted several of the bins so it’s nice to have them full again.

Another thing I try to do with leftovers is cut and prep binding. When we trim the quilts after quilting, there are usually some good lengths left of the backing fabric. I like to cut these into 2.5″ strips, sew them together, and iron them into binding.

I measure out how many inches I have, and mark it on a piece of scrap paper.

Then they get bundled up and put in my binding bin. The idea is, that when I finish a quilt, I check here first to see if I have something that will work with it.

Now the studio is feeling much tidier, though there’s still a few things left to do…

I hear you, Lemmy! The Flannel Foothills are looking rather daunting and need to be tamed too. On the next rainy day, they will be chopped into 5″ and 8″ pieces. I plan to make some pet blankets to donate to local animal rescues, as the flannel scraps are really adding up!