how i sort my fabric scraps

I try to have a zero waste sewing studio, which means that I save all my fabric and thread scraps. Everything. All of it.

I used to keep the scraps in big plastic recycling bags in my studio, but they got a little unwieldy, plus it was hard to find particular scraps I might like to repurpose.

So back during my Christmas break, I decided to sort all the scraps. I had three categories:

• cotton fabric scraps that could be used for quilting
• long, thin scraps of fabric and thread that were too small to be used for quilting
• bigger pieces of other kinds of fabric, that I wouldn’t want to use for quilting

I bought two huge, plastic garbage cans, and filled them with the long, thin scraps and the non-cotton scraps.

Then I repurposed an old plastic Rubbermaid bin for the cotton scraps.

I’m loving the sense of organization I have now.