scrap management

I've had some questions recently regarding scrap storage. I thought I would share my process. (I feel like I'm revealing a lot of myself here, so please, go easy on me.)

I really like using up every last bit, most of you know that. But it's time really consuming. And it requires a lot of organization. I'm getting there, but I have a lot of room to improve. This is my preferred method. At least for now.

First, when I'm cutting, I put all my extra fabric in a bin that sits next to my cutting area. This is a new thing for me. I used to just throw the extras anywhere and leave them wherever they landed. It made for an extremely messy sewing room after a project. And clean up took forever. The box helps a lot. When it's full, I sort. What a novel idea. :)

I take out all the larger pieces and sort them by color. Bonnie has an impressive scrap users system. And I have tried something similar once, but for me, it didn't work. I do a lot of improvisational piecing and I don't like trimming down fabric to certain sizes. I like having random sized scraps. So the color sorting method works for me. The smaller boxes are just cheap plastic shoe box-sized storage bins.

Pink and white scraps seem to rule the roost.
Are you surprised?

The "pretty" salvages are put in one box. (I like using my fabric storage cubes for these.)

Then I put aside the strings and not so pretty salvage pieces, to be used for knit rugs.

These pieces are perfect sizes for my spiderweb scrap quilt.
They are 1"-2" wide, approximately and most are not very long, maybe 6" or less.

Then I have the strings that are too wide for the knit rug, but too skinny for the spiderweb quilt. These are set aside for card making.

I have a small stack of 2.5" squares.

They are nice standard size square to have on hand.

I think most of them are leftovers from projects over the years.

Now this is where it gets ridiculous. Snippets. These are less than 2.5" square. I think most are 1" x 2" or so. But I have used these. So I continue to save them.

Then I have scraps in bags. These are a mixture of things. Some are projects that I wanted to save the scraps for another project...someday. The green scraps I liked too much to put in with the other greens, so I bagged them. Then I have my red and green bag-scraps for a Christmas quilt...someday. If I would recommend one thing, I would say, DON'T START storing fabric in plastic bags. It's dangerous. And...I think they multiply in the back of a dark closet.

And this is my blue + purple bin. And misc. fabrics.

I really need to sort through this monster.

It's embarrassing.

So there you have it.

Now, how do YOU sort your scraps?