Scraps Only Practice Project

Last night I needed a gift tote for a care package, but none of the ones I have on hand fit my particular gift. I was also thinking about my zero waste idea. So I hauled out the scrap bag and used some leftover strips, handmade binding, pieces of fat quarters, muslin and some aqua broadcloth to make this with the quilt-as-you-go method:

I embellished the strips with gold holographic Sulky in a simple running stitch (which also helped disguise the fold lines I couldn't iron out of the binding strips.) In my scraps I also found a long piece of grosgrain white ribbon which worked nicely as the handles:

The bright floral strips and binding are from my Mom's 2019 birthday quilt.

The purple and green strips are from the first tote I made for Oliver. The aqua broadcloth I used for the bag and the lining came out of my spring bin cleaning project.

It's fun to revisit my old projects this way, too.

Comments

nightsmusic said…

Very fun and bright! :) And a good use of the scraps.

June 23, 2020 at 9:12 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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