Zero-Waste Quilting

For the last 12 months I've been saving every single scrap of fabric and thread leftover from my quilting in one place. Because I'm cheap I try not to waste any fabric, but trimming inevitably creates scraps. As is my habit I used many of the scraps I generate for other projects this year. The real purpose was to discover how much textile waste I personally produce in one year that I didn't reuse. Here is the result for 2019, sorted into bags by size and type:

I'd say it's about three pounds of scraps. I can still reuse everything except these two bags:

The bag on the left is thread and fabric snips from my thread catcher, and the bag on the right are fabric pieces too thin to reuse for sewing. It's much less than I thought; maybe about eight ounces of waste in total. I could use these scraps as stuffing for a pin cushion, or material for a mixed-media art project, or even embellishments for my journal pages, so there's still a chance I can put them to work.

Is it possible to be a quilter and have zero waste? I think it depends on how creative you are with your leftover and scrap materials. Planning and purchasing the right amount of fabric for a project is definitely the first line of defense, and I'm already trying to do that. For 2020 I want to see if I can also be more mindful of the textile waste I create. I can certainly get into the habit of making quilt blocks from leftover fabric, and maybe by the end of the year have enough to make a sampler quilt.

Waste thread is more difficult to manage -- often my snips are less than a few inches in length -- but I've seen artists sandwich snips and threads between layers of tulle and top-stitch them into very pretty panels, so that's one possibility. I'll do more research and see what inspires me.

Comments

nightsmusic said…

I generally don't have much waste when I quilt either. I'm not nearly as creative as you though. If the pieces are small, I toss them. If they're a bit larger, I donate them to a local guild. I'm interested to see what you come up with.

December 25, 2019 at 8:01 AM

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to...

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.

Valerean

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