Cutting the Day Away

The overflowing scrap bin and piles of fabric set aside after cutting was reducing my useful space on the cutting table to smaller and smaller acreage, necessitating a long session of reduction efforts on Friday.  Fat quarter sized chunks were returned to their dresser and precuts to the scrapbooking tower drawers.  For several months I have just been chucking the 2.5" squares and strips willy-nilly in their drawer and it got to the point where the lid would not close without effort.  

Sorted once again into color families--but so many 2.5" colored squares and strips meant moving the white/cream/beige to another drawer. 

The 1.5 and 2" drawer is fairly full too, though I have also been cutting a lot from the 2" lengths for Easy Breezy leader-ender blocks.

The big stack toward the back of the box above is of Easy Breezy sets ready to sew.  It was fun to choose from the scrap drawers for the color combos.  As usual, neutrals are the hardest to keep stocked. I'm anticipating needing a lot of leader-enders while piecing two quilt tops ready to layout and assemble.

2.5" squares and strips on the left, and neutral strips still to cut down on the right.  All these precuts--plus another drawer with 3.5" squares and strips, and a drawer for solid precut squares/strips, live in the scrapbooking tower under my cutting table.  I basically follow Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville's Scrap User's System, on a smaller scale than the full-time quilter that she is!  She just showed a storage rack holding clear shoe boxes full of her fat quarters sorted by color.  I haven't nearly that many fat quarters but envied the space and ease of her storage shelves!  Someday I may have an actual sewing room with four walls, a door and a closet, and then perhaps my storage methods can change :)