When I first started quilting nearly 50 years ago, I started out with one big garbage bag of Scraps that was given to me by my Great-Aunt Charlotte. It wasn’t sorted in any way, shape, or form, and I just riffled through it for what I wanted to use.

I also started out making completely scrappy Quilts because that’s what was in the bag, and as a teenager, I couldn’t afford to go buy yardage for quilts.

Fast forward about 25 years: I had a good job, and was attending big quilt shows quite often — quilt shows that had vendors! I bought a lot of fabric, and told myself I was building a stash. And boy, did I build a stash! And from what I saw at some of those shows, I wasn’t even building mine as fast as some of those other quilters– haha!

I also accepted just about any fabric that other quilters wanted to throw my way. Bags of scraps, boxes of yardage, goodies I found at yard sales, estate sales, and antique stores, and opportunities to clean out abandoned houses, even.

Sounds like a mess, huh? Well, it gets better . . . (or worse, as the case may be . . .)

I’ve found that, over the years, as you make scrap quilts, you simply end up with smaller and smaller scraps. So I became really interested in using tiny pieces to make large quilts. A few cases in point . . .

My MixMash quilt:

Mad Dash (I’m on my third one of these):

My Log Cabin Challenge quilt:

Plus more!

And . . . you can probably guess that I have several more in the works.

A Postage Stamp:

A Snowball quilt:

A quilt using triangle trimmings:

And some more I’ll show you as this series continues.

Even tho I keep the bigger pieces in my stash sorted by color, I don’t generally keep my tiny scraps sorted by color (but some of them are). I know this makes no sense. There’s no rhyme nor reason why I do some of the things I do! To each his own, huh?

All of my odds and ends of scraps are in a couple of large tubs for now, and I keep working my way through them (slowly). I may change my scrap storage method, once I get the tubs gone through, but it takes a really long time to work through a tub of tiny scraps. Right now, I’ve been working on this bag for the entire month of February, and I still don’t have it emptied out!

But as I work through the bag, I’m cutting pieces for all of the scrap quilts I have going on, so each of them is getting moved along quite nicely.

At some point, I’ll have enough pieces cut for those quilts, and will either have to store what’s left, or come up with more scrap quilt ideas!

As I work through bags like this, I also cut a few for my pre-cut sizes that I keep in my rolling cart (which are not sorted by color, just by size).

Strings go in the string bucket:

Some chunks go in the chunk bucket for my Tile quilt and for use in appliqué projects:

So if you like to use the smallest of scraps, and like me, have trouble throwing any piece away, maybe some of these links will inspire you. None of these quilts is a race for me . . . I just keep throwing stuff at them as I process more scraps.

Years ago, I wrote about how I store some of my scraps and pre-cuts HERE, but I’ve since changed it to make it easier to use, and I’ll talk about that later.

I’ll also post more about how I store the scraps that aren’t in use at any given moment. And I’ll have some new scrap quilt tutorials for you as well, for even more ideas on how to use them up! Stay tuned . . . the series will continue.