Snips and Scraps

 NOTHING GOES TO WASTE When you're as dedicated to using every last little bit of fabric as I am, you hate to throw away even the smallest piece. So you cut your scraps down into squares and strips and maybe even sort them by color so you can use them in projects. But there are still those bits. The selvedges and the wonky edges you trim from a piece of fabric, the pieces of batting that are smaller than a potholder, the seams of a garment that is being cut up and repurposed - there has to be something better than throwing them in the trash. There is something better I turn mine into dog beds, which I donate to our county animal shelter. The process is pretty simple. I start with a fabric bag made from muslin or some other fabric that is basically disposable. I've used fabrics that were faded, as well as prints that I was no longer fond of. The size is up to you. I make mine about 22 inches square so I can use the full width of the fabric and have the selvedge at the ope...

WIP WEDNESDAY - FALL EDITION While I'm working hard to get a jump on Christmas, I haven't let fall sneak in completely unnoticed. This is what I started working on this week - leaf shaped pot holders. I got the idea for this a couple weeks ago when a friend and I were talking about end of year projects and she asked if the local food pantry needed pot holders. In the past I have crocheted some to be given to clients when they come in to shop. I use up old crochet cotton that's been sitting around for years, or the tail ends of skeins of acrylic worsted yarn. They don't take long to do, but they do take time, and I have other things I'd rather work on right now. Suddenly I remembered that I had bought a large piece of Insul-Fleece a while ago that I had never used and I realized quilted pot holders was the way to go. Pinterest showed me a wealth of ideas, but this leaf stood out as a good way to use up fabric scraps, and so that's what I'm concentrating...

HOLIDAY PREPARATIONS CONTINUE Here in Arkansas we are in the middle of full-on harvest season. Yesterday the highway was full of combines and grain trucks, and I saw my first cotton field that had been sprayed to open the bolls. Things got off to a late start, so it's a mad dash to get everything in before we get a tropical storm or some other untoward event.  But in my quilt studio it is holiday season. I don't do a lot with fall, although I have some ideas you will see in due time. But Christmas is a huge deal. And it makes me ridiculously happy that I got this top done early enough that it may even be quilted before 2017 is over.  I bought this as a kit several years ago when I was visiting a friend who was fortunate enough to live in a town with a lovely small quilt shop. I don't often work with kits, but this appealed to me and it wasn't frightfully expensive, so I bought it. The title is Holiday Frost and the fabrics are by Henry Glass; I don't oft...

WIP WEDNESDAY I'm focusing on quilting this week, so my WIP is something that I work on in between bigger projects. The pattern name is Tessellating Flowers, and it's one that I have loved since I first saw it at a friend's house many years ago. In fact the fabric I'm using is some I bought on my way home from her house after that visit.  I had a hard time finding the name of the pattern. It wasn't in any of my books, and Pinterest didn't yet exist. I eventually learned the name from looking at pictures on Google, but they wanted $5 for the pattern, which I wasn't willing to spend. I knew it was simple, but what I didn't know was the proportions of the pieces. I did several experiments, then eventually put it away and worked on other things. This spring the fabric made it to the top of a pile and I did some more exploring on the internet to see what I could find out. This time Pinterest came to my rescue and confirmed what I had suspected - that t...

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? This is my "wall of shame." I really shouldn't call it that because it's what I look at when I sit at my sewing machine and I don't like the idea of looking at something with negative connotations. Usually it's just the fabric storage area. Until I look at all those clear plastic boxes. They're what make me groan.  Those boxes hold UFO's. And they've been there with very little change since I moved into this house and put this studio together over 10 years ago. You can see they are all labeled and stacked neatly. And the fabric is all folded and organized by color family and/or type of fabric. The wall is 20 feet long. And it's full - floor to ceiling. And that's not all of it. There's another corner that holds overflow; mostly leftover batting and other odds and ends. And a couple of project boxes. And if I really wanted to tell all I would show the shower in the bathroom that holds boxes of dress fabric and...

FINISHED OBJECT FRIDAY This was a good week for finishing things. Some weeks I knit and knit and knit and it doesn't look like I've made any progress on anything. This week I have several things to show you. First, a blanket. The ripple pattern has been around forever and continues to be a favorite, sometimes under the pseudonym of "chevron." This particular version caught my eye because of the stripe pattern and I have made several. I think the teal yarn was some I bought on Ebay a couple years ago (a good place to find big lots of yarn, usually the clean out of Grandma's closet, but a bit of a pig in a poke); the white was given to me (it originally was sold by Woolworth's for $1.59 a 3.5 oz skein). The pattern is called Ripple Baby Blanket and is free on Ravelry (click  here  for the pattern). My only complaint is that because you change colors nearly every row there are a lot of ends to weave in at the end, but sometimes the end result is worth ...