Sunday, February 9, 2014

Reclaiming Leftovers

One of the things I am committed to is striving to keep as much as possible from going to waste and ending up in landfills. We reduce our use of many things; compost as much as possible; reuse paper, plastics, aluminum, etc.; recycle everything our local system accepts; donate reusable items; and try to reclaim anything that can be used in new ways.


Like Christmas cards
 
 
Bubble wrap 
  
Magazines & wallpaper
Recently, Ami Simms posted a blog entry challenging people to use leftover fabric. The 2014 Crumb Quilt Challenge

It included a video from one of her classes. It was about how one of the students uses the leftover pieces from quilt blocks. Crumb Quilts

About the same time, I happened to see a video of Noriko Endo on The Quilt Show with Alex Anderson & Ricky Tims describing how she creates her pieces with what she calls “confetti.“ There are two videos available onYouTube: Confetti1 and Confetti2
I started thinking about using up the fabric scraps I have been accumulating over the years.  

Since I often work on projects that require coordinated fabrics, I tend to forget about all the bits and “crumbs” available to me. While I’ve considered techniques like Noriko’s in the past, I haven’t done much with them. These videos seem to be a wake-up call to think about them in different ways.
How about you? Do you have additional ways of using up those pieces? If not, do the examples spur any new ideas? I'd love to hear how you would use some of your scraps to create new works of art.

Until next time, I wish you peace and all good.
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

4 comments:

  1. Yer nieceFebruary 10, 2014 at 4:54 PM

    Bonnie Hunter's site www.quiltville.com has many excellent patterns for using scraps, strings and even the tiniest crumbs. Right now I'm working on a pattern that uses the "bonus" half square triangles you get when you piece flying geese using a rectangle and two squares. Happy stitching!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. DianneFebruary 11, 2014 at 12:16 PM

      Thanks for the link, Yer niece. I am contemplating a modified use of Bonnie's sorting system. (I don't have anywhere near as many scraps!)

      Delete
  2. LostinspaceFebruary 13, 2014 at 6:09 AM

    I was just re-reading Bonnie's book, well the beginning and now I totally get it that we should be using scraps and making a second quilt with her leaders and enders system as we go along. You only have to choose the quilt, the size of the 2 squares to sew together and always have a pile of them in a box next to the sewing machine when you are piecing. Sounds like you have a zillion scraps to iron and cut. Joan Ford's Scrap Therapy is good and has a system too. I think this has to be done little by little, all the scraps can be overwhelming!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. DianneFebruary 13, 2014 at 3:35 PM

      I hadn't heard of Joan Ford's system, but agree it looks good. It will certainly help with organizing the larger pieces of my scraps. The picture I included in my post is the top of my entire scrap stash, which fits in a round storage ottoman. It will be a project for at least a full day or more, but I suspect it won't take too long to sort it all out. Thanks for the added inspiration.

      Delete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)