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

Old Loves & Such

My guy kindly bought me my favorite Chinese take out the other night, and my fortune cookie offered up an interesting story starter: This sounds sweet, right? Only the first thing I thought of was an old love coming back from the dead . . . . must be October. In other lovely news, my favorite hand-dyed thread artist, Lorraine from Colour Complements , is moving her business from Etsy to her own web site. Many of my favorite sellers on Etsy are leaving due to the whole "free shipping" coercion debacle, which has also soured me on the site. To show support I did a little shopping at Lorraine's web site and got in these: I love her threads and trims; you simply can't buy anything like them anywhere. Her work makes my specialty thread box look like a treasure chest: At night I'm spending just as hour working on quilting the scrap project runner, and I'm making slow progress: I'll keep quilting the runner while I try to decide on a design for t...

Love Means This

Invested in a couple of hand-dyed bundles from one of my favorite fabric artists. This one said "Make me into something for Valentine's Day." So I went for a quilted and embellished tote. I kept thinking about what love means to me as I worked on it. Here's the finished tote. Although I was tempted to embellish with beads and pins, I got sick and only felt well enough to do a little stitching every night. As I worked I thought about how often love seems disappointing to us, especially when it fails to live up to our expectations. But now that I've experienced love in many forms, I can say that it's made me a better person than I might have been without it. Love is a precious thing, and should be appreciated in all its forms. I am very grateful for the love of my guy, my child and my friends who have stuck with me all these years. That's you two, in case you're wondering. :) Also finally found something to do with a ve...

Progress

My guy is back home safe, sound and exhausted. I think he just realized he's over seventy now. :) I didn't finish a sewing project while he was gone, but I did make some progress on the beach bag. I've tacked down all the fabric elements on top of the old backing fabric I quilted. Time to break out the embroidery thread box and have some fun.

Valerean

Search This Blog