Scraps Saturdays

I save nearly all of my fabric scraps from sewing, quilting and texile art projects so I can reuse them. Often I do as patchwork for crazy quilt projects or stitch practice pieces. This is the bag in my sewing room that holds them.

Here's a sample of what's in the bag: the trimmed legs from a pair of thrifted capris I altered into shorts, some fabric trimmed from some backing, a piece of cross stitch fabric leftover from framing the thrifted Santa piece, and a short length of ribbon, also from Christmas.

Once my scrap bag is full I empty it into my scraps bin here. If you think having an entire bin of scraps is a bit much, keep in mind that I gave away two other bins of scrap fabric I had saved last year to the local quilting guild. :)

Here's my problem: the scraps bin is full now, and I either have to start another bin, or devote more time to using up my scraps. Since I'm still trying not to hoard fabric, I'm going to take one night a week to use scraps only to make some small projects. I have the most time on Saturday nights, so that's when I'll work on this project. I might also start making some crumb quilting blocks for a quilt.

Here's what I made on my first scraps Saturday: two embroidered cup sleeves and a mug rug for my home office desk. I feel like I'm off to a good start.

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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.

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Valerean

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