I like to take workshops to see what makes the presenter tick. I like to know how they analyze what they are doing, what their method of working is. In case you wanted to know but were afraid to ask (or maybe you didn't want to know) this is how I work.
Cutting and sorting: when I choose the fabrics I need to cut for a project I cut a generous clean up cut. This becomes the scraps for crazy piecing and some of my crooked strip quilts.
I usually cut 4 fabrics at a time.
Then I cut a 1-1/2" strip, a 2" strip and a 2-1/2" strip. The first 2 sizes of strips are stored in boxes marked with size and whether they are batiks or regular fabrics. The 2-1/2" strip gets cut into squares and rectangles for my colorwash type quilts. This way I am always prepared for a strip piecing project, which you may have guessed is one of my favorites. I believe in saving time, since we can't buy any more of it.
The boxes of 1-1/2" strips were brought out to choose the fabrics for my Prismatic Garden series. There is no way I would pull out hundreds of fabrics to cut just one strip off of them.
This is the stack of bins where I throw all of the scraps as I am working on projects. This is before sorting.
The longer strips have a home in a large mesh cube where they eventually get sorted by warm or cool colors. The little scraps get sorted into tiny, little, med. size, larger (but still small scraps) and scraps that need to be cut to be used. I do all of this sorting in my down time, when I am tired or have a migraine, or just after finishing one project and I'm not sure what I will start next. Just playing with the pieces of fabric, seeing color combinations together that I would never have thought of, is inspiring and rejuvenating.
Cutting and sorting: when I choose the fabrics I need to cut for a project I cut a generous clean up cut. This becomes the scraps for crazy piecing and some of my crooked strip quilts.
I usually cut 4 fabrics at a time. Then I cut a 1-1/2" strip, a 2" strip and a 2-1/2" strip. The first 2 sizes of strips are stored in boxes marked with size and whether they are batiks or regular fabrics. The 2-1/2" strip gets cut into squares and rectangles for my colorwash type quilts. This way I am always prepared for a strip piecing project, which you may have guessed is one of my favorites. I believe in saving time, since we can't buy any more of it. The boxes of 1-1/2" strips were brought out to choose the fabrics for my Prismatic Garden series. There is no way I would pull out hundreds of fabrics to cut just one strip off of them.
This is the stack of bins where I throw all of the scraps as I am working on projects. This is before sorting. The longer strips have a home in a large mesh cube where they eventually get sorted by warm or cool colors. The little scraps get sorted into tiny, little, med. size, larger (but still small scraps) and scraps that need to be cut to be used. I do all of this sorting in my down time, when I am tired or have a migraine, or just after finishing one project and I'm not sure what I will start next. Just playing with the pieces of fabric, seeing color combinations together that I would never have thought of, is inspiring and rejuvenating.