Micro-organizing: newly found 4" squares, hummm?

A while back I tried to organize my sewing room.  A year or so ago it was ship-shape.  My longarm machine is in my little longarm studio in another area of the house, but my personal sewing room is in a bedroom.  Truth be told, it mainly holds fabric, but has work areas for cutting and sewing.  I'm trying to get there once again.  I spent most of yesterday putting items back where they belong.

My fabric is on shelving arranged by color.  When I pull fabric out to audition it for a project, I can't seem to train my brain to put it back, nope it piles up until my workspace is covered.  Then there is scrap control.  You all know my passion is scrappy quilts, but it can be a time consuming task taming the scrap bin.  When I'm cutting fabric for a quilt I usually am on the lookout for an opportunity to cut 2.5" strips, and if a leftover piece of fabric isn't that wide I'll cut a 2", but most of the time it goes in the string bin.  I have more strings than I know what to do with, as a result I've have to bin them according to color families.  Beyond the strips, I have what I call chunks, which are pieces of fabric that can be trimmed to 5" charms.  If I can get a 10" square out of it, that's really a plus.  I try to work with 2.5" squares, strips, 5" charms, 10" squares and I like to cut bricks which are 3.5" by 6.5".  Have you seen Bonnie Hunter's Bricks and Stepping Stones pattern?  At times if I'm in a hurry, I'll just leave it at a 3.5" strip and trim it later.  I also use 4.5" strips for her Streak of Sunshine pattern.  The only time that I will cut 1.5" strips is if I absolutely HAVE to for a quilt project.  But I'll try and avoid those at all cost, I'm just not into anything that small.  It's this chunk bin that usually begins to overflow while waiting to be attended to, so I've switched to a smaller one which means I have to deal with it sooner more than later.

Some of my yardage

I find that over the years I don't use other size squares, but at one time I did cut scraps into whatever size the piece could yield.  So I have a bunch of 4", 4.5", 6.5" and some 8.5" squares.  Unfortunately they were all swimming together in a large drawer.  Last night, I was fighting the sleepies, I knew I couldn't go to bed at 7:30pm, so I pulled out the drawer of mixed squares and sorted them, micro-organizing!!!  I was surprised at how many 4" squares I had, and scratched my head wondering what on earth I was planning to do with them?  So they finish at 3.5", which doesn't go with much of anything other than just sewing blocks together row upon row until they get to a nice quilt size, maybe throw on a border and done? 

My other problem area is batting scraps.  The small pieces I use for cleaning my longarm tracks.  The more respectable pieces I zig zag together for donation quilts or my personal quilts.  Just as long as I keep same batting with same batting, ie, I don't sew a blend together with 100% cotton.  I try not to have more than 1 or 2 seams in my pieced batting.  When I've got a size that I like sewn together I'll mark the measurements on a small piece of paper and pin it on before I put it in a big plastic tub.  On the outside of the tub I keep a list of the sizes I have available in the tub.  That way when I need a batting, I just check the label on the outside of the tub and i can see at a glance what sizes I have.  Whenever I have batting pieces I try to get those taken care of ASAP because it can get out of hand.




List of pieced batting


Then there's the book scene, one of these days I will have to get some software to document what I all have, but for now the books are on shelves and off the floor, that's a good thing, right? 



The binders on the upper right hand shelf contain patterns I've printed off the computer, or patterns that could otherwise get lost





The red and green containers at the very top are magazines, I try not to keep more than what these can hold.  The rest is more books

 Today I hope to tackle the work area and other half of the room.