When Life Gives You Scraps...

October Weekend Part 3: 101 Uses for Fabric Scraps

You've heard of Rapunzel who could turn straw into gold? Quilters are kind of like that too.

Remember this photo that I showed you the other day?

WWSM (What would Sally make?)

Sally is making string-pieced blocks for her Bonnie Hunter's Jamestown Landing quilt. They are pieced on top of a paper backing. She is using very, very small scraps.

Sally took this class at the Vermont Quilt Festival this year. You can even see her in Bonnie's blog post about the class. She is in the fourth photo down, on the far left hand side, wearing a red shirt. The pattern is in Bonnie's String Fling book.

How about this picture?

These bags are filled with love.

Some people might think this is trash. But to others, it can be treasure. When I went to QuiltPort USA this past April, the weekend's organizer, Melly Rubins, had a trash bag at the end of every cutting table. Everyone was asked to use the bag for fabric scraps only. At the end of the weekend, Melly collected all the little scraps and used them to stuff pet pillows which she donates to her local animal shelter. She inspired me to do this too, so I have started to save my scraps. It's caught on among my Brown Bagger quilting friends, and they are starting to save their scraps for me too! I call it "Shreds for Beds."

Even the tiniest of scraps add up to comfort and love in a pet pillow! No fabric is too old or too ugly!

Here I am with Marion stuffing our first pet pillow of the weekend.

Thanks to all the girls, no fabric shreds went into the trash this weekend and we stuffed four pet pillows. Thanks also to
Kim P. who donated two huge bags of shreds that we used for some of the stuffing.

And here's a shout out to my best pet bed helper!

Emma stuffed at least two pet pillows all by herself! Thanks Emma!

A funny story about Emma. Emma was an enthusiastic helper and went around the room collecting scrap fabrics during the quilt weekend. At one point, she almost cleaned off Sally's table because she thought I could use all those tiny pieces for dog bed pillow stuffing... luckily Sally intercepted her!

My co-worker Jen volunteers at the South Shore animal rescue every week and I filled the back seat of her car with eight pet pillows on Monday. She was thrilled.

This next project isn't exactly scraps, but it also uses very small pieces of fabric.

The amazingly talented Kim P. is working on the Snake River log cabin, shown on the cover of Judy Martin's Log Cabin Quilt Book. You can see the very detailed diagram that Kim is working from. Here is one of Kim's finished blocks. There are A LOT of pieces and A LOT of blocks in this quilt. No, Kim is not finished yet (this is no Quilt in a Day), but she is working on it quite determinedly.

Still a few more blog posts to come about our October Weekend. I took A LOT of photos to make up for some lack of prior blogging (yes, I heard you Complaint Department).

Linking up on Friday to Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Richard and Tanya Quilts and
Crazy Mom Quilts. Thanks for visiting!

Read my other non-quilting blog here. I'd love it if you signed up to subscribe!

Pugs and kisses,
Nancy