A project ends and something is always left on the table. Not enough to fold back onto the shelf, too good to put in the bin, and shaped like nothing in particular because it is what remained after the pieces you planned for were cut. Most of us put those bits into a bag or a box, and what happens to them after that comes down to two decisions. One is the size of the container. The other is the order in which you cut. Neither has anything to do with how much you love the fabric, and both can be settled once and then followed without further thought.
Here is what each decision does:
- A small container gets the work done and a large one postpones it indefinitely. The instinct is to choose something roomy, because a bigger box means fewer interruptions and less thinking about the problem. What a bigger box actually produces is a job nobody will ever start. A large container takes months to fill, so the moment of dealing with it keeps receding, and by the time it is full the volume inside is so great that sitting down to it means giving up a whole day. That is not a task you postpone once, it is a task you postpone permanently, and the box becomes furniture. A deliberately small container fills in weeks rather than seasons, and what it holds when full is an hour of work at most. The size of the container is not a storage decision. It is the decision about whether the cutting ever happens.
- Let the full container be the signal to begin, rather than a date or an intention. Planning to sort things out at the end of the month does not survive contact with the end of the month, and deciding to do it when you have time reliably means never, because that time does not arrive on its own. A physical state is a far better trigger than a plan, because it is not a matter of remembering or of willpower. The lid will not close, so you cut. Nothing is being tracked and nothing has to be scheduled, and because the container is small, the signal arrives often enough that the job stays the size you agreed to.
- Cut the largest useful shape first, then the next largest, and keep going down. Take each irregular piece and ask what is the biggest usable shape it will give you. Cut that, then look at what remains and ask the same question again, until nothing usable is left. The order is the entire point, and it is worth understanding why rather than taking it on trust. A narrow strip is the shape your eye finds first in an odd piece, because the long edges are obvious. Cut that strip and the larger square that also fitted in there is gone for good, and you will never know it was available. Do it the other way round and nothing is lost, because the small shapes are still there in what remains after the large one has been taken out. The loss only runs in one direction, which is why the rule is worth following even on the pieces where it seems not to matter.
- Decide your list of shapes from what you actually use. All of this depends on knowing what a useful shape is for you, and that is personal rather than general. Look back at the last few things you have made and write down the sizes that keep appearing in them. Those are your shapes. Cutting to a list you found somewhere else produces pieces that are technically tidy and that you never reach for, which is the same waste as before with more work attached to it. Keep the list short, three or four sizes, and write it on a card that stays with the container so the decision is not made afresh each time.
- Trim the ragged edges while you are cutting, not later. Every piece that goes into storage should come out ready to sew. Square the ends as part of the cutting, take off the selvedge edge, remove the wavy bit where the rotary cutter wandered. It costs seconds while the ruler is already in your hand, and it is the difference between reaching for a piece and using it, and reaching for a piece and putting it back because dealing with it right then is more than the moment allows. Anything that still needs work before it can be used is not really cut. It has only been moved.
Watching the sequence run through a container of odd pieces shows how fast it goes once the shapes are decided, and how much comes out of what looked like very little:
Both decisions do the same thing, which is to take a judgement you would otherwise make while tired at the end of a project and make it once, in advance, in the calm. The container tells you when. The order tells you how. What is left is a drawer of pieces you can actually sew with, and the particular pleasure of starting something on a Sunday afternoon without having to cut anything at all first.
