Scrap Management a la Colby Cartledge

I do not in any way manage my scraps. Our guild does all of it's monthly meeting on Zoom, and Colby asked people to put in the chat how they manage scraps and someone posted a clear plastic bag, and that very much resonated with me. There was a time when I threw them away--a practice that is slightly horrifying to me now that I know more about using them and also how much water the textile industry uses. And so now I go through them when getting ready to do a new quilt and pick out some pieces that are bigger and can be used in the quilt. Colby was very non-judgemental, other than saying you should gift them if you don't want them--there are homes for them.

She described in detail her system, which is to cut things into 2.5" strips, 5" strips, 2.5" squares and 5" squares. Save the less than 2.5" strips for string quilts, and then you can do you--cut pieces that generally work for you--this works for her. Then she showed a trunk show of quilts that are either string pieced (she does the blocks on used dryer sheets--genius, as they are all precut to the same size and basically trash) or use the sizes that she cuts her scraps to, and then here are two take home messages for me--one is to "shop your scraps first", and then the corallary being "pick a color way, not a particular fabric", which means that you don't need to have enough of the scrap for the whole quilt, but rather enough of many scraps that are the same color way and value to do the quilt. The string quilts are pretty scrap forward, or color crazy, but a lot of the scrap quilts were harmonious, just not the same. She says that she designs a quilt with the scraps in mind, so if she has beaucoup blue, the next quilt will revolve around that, and so on. She supplements with yardage, but she doesn't start there. It was just awesome to hear her walk us through her thinking, and it also gives me a starting point as I think about managing my scraps, rather than having them all laid out on a table!