Pinwheels with My Scraps

Pinwheels! Why all the pinwheels? Pinwheels make me smile. They are cheery and I get a surge of satisfaction every time those eight triangles, four HSTs, all meet at a central point. These particular pinwheels are made from corner trimmings leftover from a quilt I made in 2012 when my first grandchild was born. Making these pinwheels brought back fond memories of her arrival and of making that quilt, Little Witch Girl.  This sewing diversion is also my first overdue step in controlling my scraps. Hopefully this nostalgic approach will lead to success in scrap reduction and scrap recycling.

One of my goals for 2026 is scrap management. I made no progress in scrap management in 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025. In 2022 I was going to research the best approach. Here are quotes from each of my years of good intentions with poor results.

2022:
"I will develop a method to manage my scraps, a promise I have made to myself several years running. I will go beyond merely reading all the different suggestions for organizing in the media – by color, by shape, by trimming to consistent sizes. Then I will choose a method that, for me, is easy and not onerous to implement. Even if I gather 90% of all my scraps in one place in a designated bin (or bins) I will consider this a victory to start and worry about how to sort, group and utilize them later."

2023, 2024, 2025:

"consolidate/control scraps", "develop a system to consolidate and control"

My ineffective approach, which has been flopping for many years, is to put all the unused fabric leftover from a quilt in a ziplock bag. I have bins full of these bags, deluding myself into thinking I was organized.  Advice I'd read suggested that this practice was wise because the fabrics in each bag already coordinated amongst themselves, but... so what? I now have many bins of zip-locked bags taking up space. I needed a sustainable approach to deal with these scraps —  other than trashing them. For me to persevere, the method needed to be fun and inviting. Hence my pinwheel attempt.

One zip locked bag at a time, I am making the paired triangle trimmings up into pinwheels. So far I have gone through three bags: one for the previously shown baby quilt made in 2012, another for a monkey quilt made in May of 2014, and a third for a nautical quilt made in August 2014. By coincidence purely, the scraps from these three quilts lend themselves primarily to triangles and pinwheels. 

These green and white pinwheels are from a shamrock wall hanging I completed this year. It is unusual for me to deal with the scraps so soon. Ideally I should do it after each completed quilt, but usually I am bored with the fabrics by then. I'm finding it much better to procrastinate and sift through the old stuff, stirring up fond memories. I will not run out of "old stuff" to sift through for quite a while.

Of course there are other shapes other than triangles in the bags. The long narrow pieces I am gathering as strips to possible go into quilt blocks striped on the diagonal. The squares I am stacking and they may go into 4-patch or 9-patch or even 16-patch depending how many I accumulate. Odd shaped pieces are accumulated in a designated bag for dog bed stuffing. At this point I am doing no cutting to pre-determined sizes.

On low sewing mojo days, or on doldrum days between projects, I can boost my mood and jog some pleasant memories by zipping open a bag. Also, in this gradual approach, I am not trashing my sewing room all at once dragging out everything to process. With each bag I handle, I get to review and reminisce about the quilt that generated those scraps. It is far too soon to tell, but a good outcome would be having a bin for pinwheels, one for squares, one for strips, and one for orphan blocks. It is a start. Will I keep it up? Fingers crossed.