It's about exploring and sharing my creative adventures (mostly sewing these days) ~
~those activities that sometimes obsess, usually inspire, occasionally frustrate
~and always provide a delightful maze to wander through.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Those Fabric Scraps that are just too fine to toss......

Hello.  My name is Jilly Be and I'm a fabriholic.   Not only do I adore petting the luxurious cuts of shimmery silk, and melt at the mere thought of wrapping my body in oh-so-soft cashmere, when I'm all done with the cutting & sewing, even the little bits of these goodies that are left over give me far too much pleasure to just toss.

Besides which, I'm a life-long recycler & re-user of anything that might have a hint of creative re-use, somewhere, to someone....even if not me.    So it has to be a pretty tiny scrap for me to consider it worthless.

But what to do with them to make them worth hanging on to?   I got a noodge from dfr at Sewing Misadventure with some of her ideas, including drawstring bags, handkerchiefs and casings - in fact, I just used a scrap for a waistband casing myself:


Rebecca at Tales of a Wannabe Seamstress also has a bunch of ideas & links, including coasters & pencil pouches.

For the holidays last year I gathered some of my beautiful silks, knits, sheers.....all sorts of fabrics....to mix & match into versatile, never-ending scarves like this one:

It's two different variations of the same scarf, & you can make many more just by pulling the insides through!   You can make these scarves with fabric scraps as small as 6" x 12" - I got the instructions from Threads Mag Issue #97 (September 2001), and reviewed the scarves here.  Here's my  pictorial tutorial on How to make an endless tube scarf.  Great gifts, but be sure to save your oober special pieces that match that great jacket you made for yourself!

I really like using knits for this sort of scarf, because you can scrunch them up & end up with a look like this:
This scarf is actually a mix of knits & wovens - your imagination is the only limitation!

Of course, dolls are the perfect size for some of those scraps, as Gloria Stitches knows.

What unique ideas have you come up with for your scraps?   Link your ideas here & pay them forward!

6 comments:

dfr2010 said...

Ahh, thankies for the link love ... and the scarf idea definitely needed its own post!

Jillybejoyful said...

And thanks to you too, MissAdventure! :)

Rebecca said...

I LOVE the idea to make a scarf! I agree with dfr, it deserves it's very own post. :]

glorm said...

Thanks for the nod. Since I began sewing doll clothes, the scraps I think worthy of saving have gotten smaller and smaller. Only 3" x 3"? Why that's big enough for a purse for Barbie.

Jillybejoyful said...

::::makes note:::: be sure to bring a bag of 3"x3" scraps the next time I see Gloria. And remind her that she asked for them ;-D

glorm said...

Gonna have to get back to you on this.