Foam Board Scrap Organizer

Maybe it’s just me, but when I have an idea of something to make with scraps, I want to get busy and make it.   I don’t want to fiddle through all these bins full of

odd shaped, wrinkled scraps and have to press, then measure and then cut them into strips or squares... spending hours of prep, before I even get to use them.  ,, By the time I get that done, my back is killing me, I’m tired of pressing and cutting an my creative excitement about making them into an actual block is gone.  It's even worse thinking about going through all that trouble, just to use a few as leaders and enders with another project I'm working on.

I have all these shoe box containers currently sorting my scraps by color, and a larger one with whites/creams.  Some are crammed full, and others only are a quarter full.  Full or not, I’m rarely using them and they are just taking up valuable space.  

I decided what I wanted to do was to take a couple day's a month and just dedicate my time to pressing and cutting these scraps into usable pcs. But then I would also need a way to store them so that they would stay organized by size cut as well as pressed.  Ideally, they would also be contained in a manner that would not take up much space in my craft area.

Here is what I came up with:

My inspiration for this project came from two sources.  If you haven’t visited their channels yet, I highly recommend them both for great organization tips and Idea’s .

·         “The Crafty Organizer’s” youtube channel

·         And “Just Get it Done quilts” youtube channel

Material costs:

·         3 sheets of Foam Board from Dollar Tree…… 3.00

·         2 long glue sticks … had on hand……………….. 0.00

·         1- 24 qt. sterlite container …………………………. 7.99

o                                                             Total cost……..10.99

Tools Needed:

·         A rotary cutter and ruler to cut the foam board

·         Hot Glue Gun with glue sticks.

My scrap bin needed to have at least three tiers of trays inside to hold the scraps.

Ea. tray needed  to be able to lift out easily without much effort, so they needed to have handles.

Ea. tray had to be able to store a variety of squares and strips.  But what sizes? 

 I decided to go to the master of scraps… Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville, to get my inspiration .  I also saw someplace where one person cut her’s into layer cake size, charm block size, etc.  So for me, I decided for this bin to start with the 5” x 5” charm block size, and have slots for strips and blocks from that size down at ½” intervals.  So in other words I have 5” square , 5” strip, 4 ½” square, 4 ½” strip, etc. on down to 1” as my smallest. 

My trays have mixed sizes (no particular order) as to what sizes were in the layers together.  I just laid them out on my cutting mat to see how much would fit nicely, keeping the squares and strips together in one tier and leaving about 1/2" space around the fabric pcs. so it would be easy to get them out when I needed them.

I didn’t sort them in colors either as I just don't have that many scraps overall, but if I ever get to the point of having a lot... I may break them down into color families. 

 But for now, I can just take out my square and pull out what colors I need for the current scrap project.

Currently, I’m using them as leaders and enders while working on other projects.  More about that in a later post.

Anyway, that Is kind of the project in a nutshell.  I am pretty sure I’ll be making at least one more of these and since I have had  requests for a tutorial, I will see what I can do to bring that to any of you who are wanting to see the process visually.  I will warn you however, that when it comes to me and glue, it’s a mess.  This system is for organization, not beauty , so messy glue in the trays didn’t bother me.. functionality was my overall goal.  If you can overlook my messy glue, then I will be glad to share a tutorial with you all later.  Leave me a comment to let me know how much interest there is.

Happy stitching everyone!