Scraps, Scraps and more Scraps

by Ellen Nepustil

What is a scrap of fabric? At the most basic level, it is the fabric left over after you make something, be it a garment, purse, or quilt. It is the leftover items once you finish sewing whatever it is you were sewing.

Interestingly enough, historically, many people made quilts from their leftover garment fabric. Waste not, want not! And you had something to sleep under and stay warm.

Today, many of us fall in love with a piece of fabric, and then buy even more coordinating fabric to

make a quilt. Which leads to a pile of scraps, leftover fabric that we didn’t use in our project.

Store bought fabric.

Eventually, the scraps take over your space, and you need to make a decision as to their destiny: Are they getting tossed, will you ever use them, should you donate them somewhere? There are many options.

For me, the answer used to be simple. Will I ever use this specific piece of fabric again? Is it large enough to cut a square out of it? Is it cotton as I don’t really use anything else in my quilts. When I lived in Colorado, there were many charitable groups that would accept donations. I could just place them in a bag, take them to a meeting, and a friend took them away!

Bags of left over fabric - scraps.

If it was large enough to fold, I put it back in the drawer. If it was pretty small, I cut it into squares. And then did nothing with those squares!

Cut up squares of scrap fabric.

In recent years, I have started making bags of various sizes. Some pieces are small enough that what used to be a scrap could now be part of a lining. I also dye a lot of my own fabric now; some scraps are more precious than others. They shouldn’t be, yet I have friends who request them.

Fabric has gotten a lot more expensive. Surely, I can make a smaller quilt similar to the larger quilt before labeling something as leftover. Or I could make a small bum bag,

These thoughts had changed my thinking on my old ways of tossing. Making 100 plus masks out of my scrap donation bag headed to a charitable group in March of 2020 certainly validated that thinking!

Scrap square quilt.

Cross bag

Fast forward a few years and once again, my left over fabric takes up a significant amount of space. Since my studio is of a limited size and only holds so much, I am back to critical thinking. Will I use this, if not, out it goes. I am also not going to spend time sorting out hand dyes from other fabric. If you want my scraps, you get the whole bag!

Very soon, I’ll be downsizing my fabric stash. I know I need to be more diligent than when I did this ten years ago. Will I really use this gorgeous piece of wool now that I have retired and live in a very warm state, probably not! While yardage probably has more value than scraps, it shares the same dilemma, namely, will I ever use it in the near future?