Basketman

I likely have fewer scraps than many here who post saying that they literally have shopping bags full, but I still have a bunch and I am unsure of just how useable they are? A significant portion of the scraps are cut on a long diagonal when I was making a New York Beauty designed quilt and so my thinking is that they are only as useful as the narrow end and their length or can I possibly make weird strings that I think I saw made here ​using a paper pieced approach and not care about matching intersections etc? I think this is called "scrappy look" and I sure have scraps

I also read there is a ruler: Judy Hopkins' ScrapMaster-Plus Ruler and from what I can deduce this is a general rule of thumb device that you can apply to scraps to determine their usefulness and help cut them to usable proportions? As a novice I foolishly bought far more rulers than I will ever use and obviously do not need to add to this wasteful collection...so anyone who has used this, or has another approach or device they use to more mindlessly sort and shape their scraps...I would love to hear from you.

toverly

Check out Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville site. She has a plan for sorting and keeping scraps that seems pretty good. After reading it, I decided to cut my scraps into 2 1/2, 2 and 1 1/2 squares. Any triangles and points that are left over are either tossed or I have a mini log cabin bag. I keep my scraps in 2 gallon ziplocs. Anything around 10" square or larger is kept in bins sorted by color. I'm a batik gal, so most read like tone on tone fabric. I have purchased too many rulers and templates also. It's easy to do. I keep those in a ruler stand, and yes, I have duplicates. Oh well. One day they may be used.

feline fanatic

I just use a regular ruler to cut odd shape scraps into usable sizes. I don't worry about the bias. ones like you describe can be used in crumb quilting
http://quiltville.blogspot.com/2005/...bs-crumbs.html


Or you can try your hand at a bottled rainbows quilt


http://www.stitchedincolor.com/2011/...ape-quilt.html

Tartan

If your scraps are shall, they can be pieced into crumb blocks or paper pieced on telephone pages and cut into blocks. Bonnie uses lots of scraps in her free pattern section on www.quiltville.blogspot.ca

mckwilter

You can also use adding machine paper to sew your string pieces to the length you want, then sew the rows together with sashing in between.

roguequilter

i save & use scraps of all sizes. as long as i can use at least a 1/8" seam for mini piecing. when making borders for some of my quilts the splash of colorful confusion adds a great touch. for very small, oddly shaped scraps i just start sewing all together in a strip similar to cq piecing. then lay it out and trim edges straight. the paper & calculater paper methods are new to me & i haven't tried them --yet ). but as long as the years long way i have been doing continues to work for me, i'll probably just continue as i have been doing.

Daylesewblessed

I wouldn't throw those bias scraps away. Used on a paper stabilizer or on muslin, they will work in fine. Crazy quilts can use bias nicely, and the pieces can work in "sew and flip", especially in the corners.

Have fun!