What to Do with Your Leftover Fabric Scraps

Whether you’ve just finished your first quilt or you’ve been quilting for years, you probably have some scraps left over from past projects. In this tutorial with Toby Lischko, learn how to use fabric scraps to create larger units and turn them into quilts.

Organization

One of the first steps to using up all of your fabric scraps is knowing what you have and organizing them in a way that makes them easy to find and use. Toby shows how she keeps some of her fabric scraps separated in large bags sorted by shape. For example, she has a bag full of small squares or rectangles and another bag for triangles.

Rectangle Pieces

Toby then shows an easy way to start piecing together the small rectangles. She explains that you don’t have to cut them all to the same size before you piece them, but that they can be trimmed down after. She aligns one of the edges as best as possible to make it so that the bulk of the excess is all trimmed from one side. She explains that once you have stitched together all of your pieces, you can measure them all to find out which one is the smallest. All of the pieces can then be trimmed down to that measurement, squared up, and then assembled into a fun, scrappy quilt top.

Triangle Units

Toby then shows another way to use fabric scraps by demonstrating how to sew together triangles to make either half-square triangles or other half-triangle units. Toby also explains that depending on the size of the fabric scraps you are using, the units and pieces made with scraps from the squares and rectangle bag can be used with the triangles as well.

For other ideas on how to use fabric scraps, check out how to make log cabin quilt squares with scraps and making scrap quilts with torn bits and strips.