How I Cut Up My Fabric Scraps....

Starting with a very odd shaped piece of BLUE.....

I have no idea what was made from this piece of fabric.... I think it was given to me....  but my first action was to press it very flat.

I looked at it with an eye to my end product..... squared off pieces with no irregular edges.  I want to end up with squares and rectangles I can use in scrap quilt projects.

I started by cutting off the tiny strips..  which might be trash...

.. or, once measured, might yield

an inch-sized rectangle for my collection... so there is ONE piece for me.  Set aside in a "Blue one-inch" sandwich bag.

Next....   still working to get that one big rectangle to the left...  I trimmed off the bottom piece...

Once I trimmed the selvedge edge (which some people don't :-), I had a 2.5-inch strip.  Assuming I have no specific project in mind.... I would put it into a "Blue 2.5-inch" bag.   If I DO have a specific project that uses 2.5-inch squares, I would go ahead and trim that up and allocate the remaining scraps to bags or trash...


..And then one more piece to cut off the bottom to square up the larger piece...

This one is 4-inches - again, I would either put the strip in a "Blue 4-inch bag" or,

as in this case, I had a project, so I cut it up into 4-inch squares.  Either way works and gets put in the bag (or with the project)

Oops!  One more little piece to trim off...

..which yielded another one-inch piece...

..and there  you have it!  That large irregularly shaped piece of fabric is now in usable shapes and sizes for the projects I chose in a prior post...

I put each sorted size in a zip-top sandwich bag and then into a designated container for BLUE.    As time goes on, I will have quite a collection of the various sizes.