i was kind of surprised, when i began sewing, at how many scraps i quickly piled up, and how few of the scraps were useful. while pattern layouts are designed to reduce waste, they also reduce the usefulness of that waste. i love fabric, loved all the fabrics i was buying to sew with, and while i couldn't bear to throw away the shreds and strips that i was accumulating, i couldn't really think of what to do with them either. i could cut very small pieces and quilt them, but with a full-time job sewing and cutting time is at a premium. so the scraps just kept piling up, and now i have a large box of them sitting in the tiny back room where i sew, gathering dust and a hint of damp and not doing much for anyone.
until i got the uncommon quilter, and i began thinking of my scraps as having far more possibilities. so here is one exercise:
the rules are simple: i can only use fabric from the scrap bin, and i can only use it in the shape it comes out in--i can trim off excess at the end but i can't alter the edges to make it look "better". if i had used the scrap earlier to, say, adjust tension on my machine, then so be it--the stitching stays in. the batting is from a pile of baby-quilt-size pieces that i had purchased at a thrift store, and the backing is a piece of an old sheet i have been digging into to use as bag linings. the backing piece determined the overall size; everything else was just piled on top.
a little more about this, and my ranting/raving about uncommon quilter, can be found at my blog. i'm still working on coming up with better tags, so bear with me. i do recommend uncommon quilter, though; it's pretty inspirational, especially if you're like me and have far more creative interests than you have time for. it's nice to be able to bring some of them together, and use up scraps in the process!
