Great ideas. Sometimes you just need to think a bit differently.
I bought Sew Over It's Cora Top pattern. I won’t go into what I thought of it! But after having spent time sorting that out I have now made at least 4 of them. Pattern says 1.75 fabric required. But during this peculiar time we are in and wanting to use some stash fabric I found I only had 1 metre of anything suitable. Turning the fabric round and cutting it crosswise meant I could get it out of that and had very little waste. I think I used a separate fabric for the facing. Of course yk7nhavr to make sure the pattern will work sideways!
I’ve also recently wanted to make long sleeved knit tops. On one of those I turned the sleeve round and cut crosswise. Again some fabric design won’t work but this did. I also found that by adding a decorative design and piecing the front I could get a long sleeved top out of just over a metre!
Trousers can be a problem and very wasteful. By piecing the crutch fork to the main body instead of cutting out all in one you can save a fair bit of fabric. I had been doing this for a few years and then DH actually bought a pair in M&S that had that same detail!
Very small scraps go in a bag and go to recycling. Large pieces are kept to mix and match if possible. I’ve managed this with several knits. Small pieces are kept in a box to use in my Appliscapes as even 1” pieces can be useful sometimes. I also pass on some leftovers to a friend for her granddaughters to make clothes for a model they have. Her DIL also takes bags of scraps for the school she teaches at.
I find there is a problem with ordering online as so many places only sell in whole metres or even half metres and that is so wasteful. I see Minerva now do it in 10cm increments so that’s good.
I generally do a layout before ordering as most of the patterns are my own anyway.
Interested to see what other people do.