2023 Final Countdown, Task One
Posted on December 29, 2023 by prairiemoonquilts in The Final CountdownHere we go! Are you ready?! I’m so excited for this. Probably way more excited than I otta be.
We’re gonna re-visit some oldies but goodies this year. I received lots of ideas and suggestions from readers this season, so I’m choosing from among the most-requested ones, since those seem to be the most-needed. I can tell you that I also need these for my ownself, so I’m totally on board with these!
And remember, if this is a task you don’t need to do cos you’re already just that organized, you can go back and choose your own task from previous countdowns HERE.
For our first task, it’s a broad one, and you can interpret it however you need to for your own particular situation.
Work on the fabric/scrap organization
I know we all have fabric that needs to be dealt with, because it’s our medium of choice for our craft. Depending on what/how much you have going on, it tends to get out of control while we’re in creating mode. At least it does for me. So . . .
- If you don’t have any scraps that need taming, you can work on getting your regular stash in order.
- If you want to make this a giant overhaul of your entire fabric collection, then by all means, jump right in.
- If you want to only tackle a certain portion of it, that’s fine, too.
- If there’s only one part of it that’s bothering you, then tackle that.
For me, it’s my loose scraps. Well, and the fact that my bins sorted by color are still too full, and my precut drawers are getting too overpopulated, and my yardage seems to be scattered everywhere, and . . . you get the picture, I’m sure.
And I’ve been working on this all year already! What does that tell you?
I’m devising new ways to store it all, and when we finally move, I will have a new place and way to store it, BUT . . . it all has to fit in that storage area, or it’s gonna have to go. So I’m trying to whittle it down a lot more before we move, because I already know right now I still have too much.
So here are a few ideas as you work through this task:
• Decide if you want your fabric to be stored in one certain area, and whether it will all fit.
• If you have a designated area, are you willing to let the excess be stored somewhere else, or will you whittle down the stash to get it to fit?
• Gather everything up so that you can assess what you have. I did this last year, and was appalled at all the random bits and bags I had stashed everywhere. I keep thinking I’ve found them all, but they keep popping up.
• What types of fabric do you store? I have yardage, bins for pieces less than a yard, and a rolling cart with drawers for the scraps that I process into the pre-cut sizes I use. I also have a shelf for bundles and purchased pre-cuts (layer cakes, charm packs, jelly rolls, etc.). And I have a vintage fabric collection that is kept separately. Try to group all your types together to see what you’re working with; this will help you see what you might need to do differently.
• I also have a bucket for strings, a basket for odd-sized chunks, and a HUGE box of scraps still to process. If you have these, you’ll need to decide where they are going to live.
• Ask yourself if you want/need to keep it all, and what you will do with it if you don’t. You can donate it, sell it, or use it up quickly to have it out of your space.
I have lots of ideas about what I will be doing with mine, but it takes time to execute those plans. For example, I have a huge pile of quilts that need backings, so that could use up a lot of my large yardage, which will help immensely, but I can’t do it all in one day — it will take some time to do that.
I want to process up and sort that huge box of scraps, but that also takes a lot of time. I’m gonna start with this box for the challenge, and hope to have it empty very soon. Just at first glance, I know some will get thrown away, some will get bagged up and given away, and some will get used up.
I also need to get rid of more fabrics that I know I will never use. I have gotten rid of all my batiks, novelty fabrics, kid fabrics, and holiday fabrics because I never use those types of fabrics. I still have one small pile of homespun, from which I intend to piece two quilt backings, and then I’ll get rid of the rest of that as well.
Everyone’s situation is different, so you need to decide for yourself the best way to handle it. As you work through this, be honest with yourself. If you never use novelty fabric, why are you keeping it? When you look through your stash to pull fabric for a project, but you continually skip over that one print you’re not in love with, why are you keeping it? If you don’t like green, why do you have so much green fabric? (Cos you never use green cos you don’t like it, that’s why! Time for it to go.)
So are you ready to tackle this?
Don’t worry if it seems daunting. You don’t have to completely finish this task for this challenge, unless you just want to dive in and do that. The challenge is to work on it. To make some important decisions for going forward. If you don’t know what you have, you can’t use it. This will show you what you have, and then you can come up with ideas on how you will use it, or even IF you will use it.
I’m excited to hear in the comments how you tackle this one. Good luck with your first task!
Facing that face that I have several(lots) small stacks of lefts overs from finished quilts is a problem for me. What to cut, sort and how, what to donate and then there are the lefts overs from that sorting. I like way to much to keep fabric lines together. I need, need to make some scrappy quilts for gifts or donations quilts. HELP. You sure are getting on the right track for you.
Praying you get to move soon.
Thanks for the push – going to tackle the make the triangle scraps but first need to finish 20 units & some fusible appliqué. But i will get it started today.
My fabric is not too bad organization-wise right now. I have way too much, but can’t part with any of it. About half of it is my sister’s stash that her husband gave me after she passed away a few years ago and I just can’t let any of it go just yet. I am trying to get most of it on comic book boards (mini bolts) so I can see what I have. That is an ongoing project.
I have a large carboard box in the bottom of my closet that has bagged cut scraps by sizes from 2-1/2″ to 6-1/2 inches square, two container with strings. My problem…I have a large plastic bag by my ironing board with pieces of fabric too large to cut into squares and not large enough to go into my larger pieces of fabrics. I keep picking t it when starting scrap quilts and the level goes down until someone gives me another bag of scraps. I’m thinking of doing different colored blocks from this for more than a few quilt tops. Right now it’s chock full.
I have scraps from the last two quilts I finished for Christmas. All of my scraps I have cut and put away in plastic carts. Ready to go for further quilts. This Christmas I made 16 quilts all out of my scraps.
Back to cutting scraps.
I am finishing up a Bonnie Hunter Quilt (Smith Mountain Morning). I will organize the fabrics in my color bins (blue & brown).
May or may not tackle a tote with random yardage in it too.
Love that you do this final countdown as I am organizing for the new year! My UFO list has not really gone down this year. My goal for the next year is to get it down to the low twenties instead of about thirty.
Yes count me in… This has been a great challenge and one I have never solved. I did read some one recently who used small bins and forced herself to use the scraps when the bin was full. Sage advice… It is what I am currently doing. Off to organize and find treasures!!!!
I am doing yardage
Moving into my new sewing room, a lot of fabric is already sorted, what the frenzied search for a project revealed were boxes and a couple of baskets that contained fabric earmarked for prewashing. Ugh! Most of that is part of a cunning plan for number one son, but panels for something else in triplicate? What was I thinking! I do have a lot of sorting to do. I still have my grandmother’s cuckoo clock in one box and some doll’s house furniture – why are they in my sewing room?!!! OK, will do tomorrow and set the time for an hour. Long enough to get something done and not too long to get despondent. Good luck everyone!
Perfect place to start for me! I need to tackle all the areas but first off is cleaning up all the fabric that was taken out or 😱 purchased in the last few months. My fabric places are overflowing so I will remove as I go for donations to make what I want to keep fit. I need to find a place to donate fabric since I don’t belong to a guild. I’ve given appropriate fabric to Linus for kids quilts but much of what is left doesn’t fall into that category. I would like to find a group making for Alzheimer’s or nursing homes, fire victims, etc. It really helps me release more fabric when I know where it’s going. Better get started!
Check your local senior center.
My first task will be straightening the folded yardage. The piles have all fallen over (too tall, maybe?), then will start cutting up a bin of scraps.
This is a really helpful post for me right now. I’m sure I’ll be referring to it through out the year. I want to confine my fabric stash to one shelving unit, other than that stored in project bins, and to do that, I need to purge more. So this is a great time to get it done.
When I finish piecing a quilt to send to a longarmer, I keep the fabric together with the pattern in case the longarmer runs into a problem. Then when I get the quilt back, I fail to distribute the remaining scraps. I have been better at cutting this fabric into 2.5, 5 and 10 inch squares. Should I store this fabric by designer or color? Thanks for your help.
I started this idea a year ago. I have made more than 30 quilts from leftovers. I sent some to my sister to get quilted. But she can’t do more right now. So I started quilting them. I finished 5 and sold them. I gave away 16 to a nursing home area. As leftovers get cut into strips and pieced into quilt tops lots of bins were emptied of bigger pieces. But the number of small strips and pieces is not going down yet. The good news is that bins of large pieces has been reduced from 5 to 3. Making progress. If I have to go to the nursing home, they won’t let me bring all this stuff. It must get reduced a lot still.
Rose Marie, if you get sent to a nursing home, Shelly and I will be there to break you out…
But how will you manage a big body without much mind? But you can add my daughter Linda to those who want to pick from the stash! I love all three of you.
I have some fabrics that I don’t enjoy using anymore. Time for them to go! I have fabrics that will be donated to charities. One of my quilt groups hosts a “Kiss it Goodbye” giveaway table during our January meeting. I’m sure I’ll have a bag full of fabrics and other items from my sewing room for the giveaway. This year I tried a new way to organize my scrap fabrics. It’s been mostly effective. I’m hoping to have more sewing time in 2024 to use up some of those scraps and keep my scrap storage to just those three bins. I don’t want to dedicate any more space than that to my scrap storage.
What a fun challenge! I took on my scrap problem early this year, and I have been good about keeping up with it. I do cut leftover yardage into useable sizes, sort by color, and store in bins. What I’d like to tackle is getting my old hand dyed yardage out of the drawers and into quilts (I have a lot.). I am currently working on a rail fence quilt and I am using quite a bit of dyed yardage. I have also planned a second project to use with this yardage. What I need, I think, is a timer to keep me focused on the project. 15 minutes a day, or something, to kick start myself. 🙂
I have my fabric stash pretty much how I want it (other than wanting more room!), but the part that was bothering me was my collection of UFOs. Spread over a few rooms and under various tables, it was hard to find anything. Daughter brought me some excess shelving from combining two households and set it up for me. Now all my UFOs are together – bliss!
Therefore, I have chosen Task 1 from 2022 instead. Choose something and finish it.
My yardage is stored in a cube unit but there is no order to it. My plan is to sort by color. One cube already has mostly solids but the others are just mish/mash. I had to finish my QOV top first and I did that today.
This has been completed.
I’m in good shape regarding my stash as I went through everything before my guild’s yard sale in October. I sorted everything by pattern—dots, stripes, floral, etc.—to give myself a different take on what I have.
My task is to finish taking the paper off the top I completed yesterday—Satisfaction by Amy Friend—so that I’ll be able to go back to trailing threads through the house rather than the little bits of paper that I’m trailing now.
That was my next goal. First is to go through the piles and bags that are scattered around the room. I am planning to take one bag at a time, press, cut into pieces for scrappy quilts. Then I need to go through and use the bigger pieces. I have several pieces of yardage, need to find patterns to use it up. Thinking about doing a sampler quilt or more. One idea is doing different stars for each block. Still under the rule where I cannot buy new fabric, unless I need it to finish a quilt. Need to contain to one room. I have two dressers, full of fabric, outside of the room.
I’m sorting through my triangles pieces and putting together sets of 4 for HSTs for my Leaders and Enders. I’m such a sucker for everyone’s cast-off corners. They are so beautiful! I can’t throw them away.
I make lots of 4-patch HSTs, then coordinate 4 sets for a 16-patch. Someday, I’ll have enough 16-patches for a queen size! Right now, I probably have enough for a twin, but thousands to go.
So, I’ll be sorting those for the Day 1 Challenge and organizing sets to be used next year.
Shelly, you got me to thinking about my overall scrap bin. Hmm, I might work on that, too. I’ll trim them to a consistent size, based on one of your quilts, called “Mish Mash”. It has always been on my bucket list—I think the pieces were 1.5” wide. Maybe 2024 is the year I start it.
Sounds like a plan although a lot of work, so I’ll have to pass this time cuz I have COVID. Tested + on Dec 26th
Good thing we had a low key Christmas and talked to all the family on the phone.
This is my report: https://weddingdressblue.wordpress.com/2023/12/30/2023-final-countdown-task-one/
So happy to be off to a “solid” start!
I am currently working on organizing my Christmas fabrics–one of the categories I store seperately from the others.
I’m also working through 2 by 2 inch squares that I cut long ago–incorporating them into a scrappy star quilt, which also uses additional scraps and a way to work through my scrap bin (which is overflowing). But each time I work through the scrap bin, I sort things.
So am looking forward to doing more of that this week. Hopefully the result will be another scrap quilt or scrappy backing that will use up a lot of that fabric!
Thanks for your ideas and the geneation of ideas from others in their responses.
I have a big plastic bin with strings and scrappy bits. I think I will try to look at that fabric. It has been sitting for years and I toss in pieces every so often.
I have always been a very organized person, it just comes naturally (my sister is the same) so I have never had a problem with my stash or even scraps. However, over the past year a friend has been giving me big tote bags of her stash as she’s retiring from quilting. I have slowly worked these gifts into my stash, weeding out fabrics that no longer make me happy and gifting them to the arts and crafts thrift store or guild free table. So I now understand the overwhelming task of getting things under control.
Right before I logged on and read your post I dumped a bin of random scraps into a big plastic bag. I weighed it: 2 lb. which is the equivalent of 8 yards. I put a label on the bag that says Quilter’s Scraps, 100% cotton. It’s in the Salvation Army box now and I’m headed there as soon as I log off.
For me, it is the “catch-all” top above my fabric drawers where random items get placed and make it feel like I’m being overrun. Can’t figure out how to post pictures here, but I cleared it off and put everything in the drawer or bin it should have been it. Looks great!
This is timely. Every year about now I go through my scraps: first, I give some thought to how much I did or didn’t use my scraps. In this year’s case, I probably used less than 1% so I’m likely to just chuck about all of them. I ask myself, would I miss any of this if I didn’t even go through them? Just chucked them all into a bag and sent them to charity? I really don’t think so! I like to make scrappy quilts occasionally but there is so much in my stash to choose from, why deal with the bits and pieces?
Got hit by a terrible stomach virus, so I’m gonna have to start small. I’m going to sort thru all the Christmas fabric all over the place ( left over from Xmas projects) and put those away.
I have moved for the last time! And this time I am going to deal with the miscellaneous- the things that are in totes that I don’t know what to do with or why I have moved them from place to place. My fabric is in pretty good shape except for those totes. I will go through each tote and deal with each thing.
Well, it’s still in progress, but I have been tiding up all the leftovers from last years quilts. Everything is being folded and put away or trimmed into squares for the bins. I am beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel!
I have gotten this one done as well. yippee. that is all three for me.
I think I have this done as I finally got the last of my fabric moved from my old house to my studio…. or did I? Now I’m not sure if I remembered that one drawer unit. To quote Scarlet O’Hara, “After all, tomorrow is another day. “
My organization this year came in the form of finding a few patterns that I can trim my scraps too, so that I can make some quilts from them. I have organized them by color. I have buckets full of random ones. After I make these few quills, I think this will give me a better idea of what is best for me at this point. But I have my patterns ready to go and a bucket of scraps waiting to jump in.
I’m still working on this one. It’s going to take a while, but now that I have my cutting table cleared off, it’s been a lot easier to sort out the fabrics. I’m working on confining them to one shelving unit, which will be nice once I get it done. Thanks for all the challenges and motivation! It’s been fun as usual!
I’m pretty good about putting away fabric after a project is done. I keep anything smaller than 1/2 yd in containers by color. I put away all the fabric that belonged in these containers. I cut down fabric by size and put it in the color drawers. It’s looking good! Thanks for the challenge Shelly!