Improvisational Scrap Busting – French Style

I have spent the past two months finishing all the forgotten quilt projects I can possibly manage. This has been great for clearing my sewing room, checking off the to-do’s on my list, and giving me hope that I can actually start some new projects soon. There is a downside to all of this, though. My scrap collection grew from a pile into a basket, which then turned into a bin that overflowed onto the floor.

Just a small sample of my overflowing scraps. I keep this little basket next to my cutting mat.

Today, I dealt with this irritating problem. It took 2 1/2 hours, but I picked through, sorted, cut, and folded. I then gave everything a proper home. For the most part, I sorted things by color or favorite fabric style–ala Kaffe, solids, hand dyed, or dots and stripes. Scraps are trimmed into a variety of sizes for squares or strips and stored in drawers. The bits and pieces get tossed. How do you sort and store your leftovers?

Leftover scraps of French and French inspired fabrics.

But then there are the fabrics that I adore so much, that it is hard to part with even the tiniest scrap. Today, that would be my French fabric collection. The colors and prints are so cheery in French fabrics. I just love to work with them. They are always a bit harder to find, which makes me want to use every inch of fabric possible. One of my favorite vendors is French Connection. They have an amazing collection of French prints and are usually at a few quilt shows that I attend.

A block exchange project using the Bushel Basket Quilt block by Edyta Star, from Laundry Basket Quilts.

There is a fun little block I am making for a group exchange. It has little 1″ strips. We are using up Civil War reproduction scraps. The blocks are quick to make and work really well mixing oodles of prints. Tiny, but really cute. This got me thinking . . .

I could get another project out of my French scraps if I just cut them into 1″ strips!

What if my blocks were different sizes and shapes? That way I could use up as much of the scraps as possible! I started with a 2″ x 2 1/2″ center (because that is what I had). Since they are so small, maybe I could offset them with crisp white alternating blocks.