Sunday, February 24, 2013

Sorting the scraps too small for quilting

Like most quilters (sewers, generally, I would imagine...& sergerers for sure!), I have a vessel for scrap piece of fabric that are too too small to be useful for any more sewing; I use an old jelly jar.  Considering I have a history of making scrap quilt creations with strip exactly 3/4" wide, you can imagine how small something has to bee for me to consider it too small. 


Some of these too-small scraps will continue to have life in my sewing room. Specifically, maybe folded back on themselves & pushed under the needle at the very end of a line of strip piecing.  Most of them alas are even too flimsy for that.  Every day-or-so quilting, I take those away & sort them into containers.  That's right, even a piece less than 3/4" wide still has life in it.

The pieces that are long enough to tie & strong enough not to snap when they are tied will be used to tie back the roses or wrap a graft or hang a temporary thing of some kind.  For example there are TWO pinecones rolled covered in old cooking grease & then rolled in mealworms (yum!) hanging from trees around the round pen to keep those blue birds happy; when they finally do breakdown it doesn't leave much in the way of pollution.  If you don't count the bluebird sh*t.  I also recently saw an idea about tying these together, doubling them & knitting mats.  I can always use really off-looking hot pads.

The pieces that are long-ish that DO snap get put in the dry bird bath with sunflower seeds sprinkled over them (so they don't just blow away).  I don't know if they all go to birds nests but I think some of them must.  Last year I did this experiment where I threw a few nickels in there to be shiny & attract birds faster...or more birds or different birds or more different birds.  Anyhow, those scraps disappeared much faster even though it wasn't as windy as it usually is.  That is the extent of my research. 

The last class of scraps: the misfits, the odd shapes, the dog-ears.  You know the ones I mean. Those go into the greenhouse & will eventually be balled up to make a not-water-proof but mostly soil-proof plug at the bottom of my potted plants.  I used to use newspaper, but this is better.

5 comments:

  1. I love the birdbath idea ... and adding some shiny coins was just BRILLIANT!

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  2. Your recycling of scraps is awesome. I read of one quilter who put those tiny scraps inside pillows for dog and cat beds at the vet, but I think you have more variety!

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  3. I knew we had a connection. Recycling scraps from sewing and quilting projects has been a mission of mine. Thanks for some more ideas.

    Many problems getting comment to go through.

    Jan

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    1. yes blogger was quite stoopid last night as well. Must be some server/hub thing.

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