Monday, December 31, 2012

Use It Up

I'm trying to use up fabric from my stash. I got serious about the effort recently and have just started cutting. My strategy has been to start with fabrics for which I have a width of fabric piece (so it includes the selvedges). Depending on how much of it I have, I'm cutting two 2 1/2" strips, one 5" strip, one 6" strip. If there is any left after this I measure it, divide by two and cut two strips this width.

Fabrics for which I don't have a width of fabric piece are getting cut into 5" squares, 6" squares, 4" by 6" rectangles or goes into a bag of fabric I am going to give away.


In the bags at the top are three quilts cut out and ready to be assembled. Two of them even have binding already made and one includes backing fabric. The left most stack is random width length of fabric strips. I'll show you in a minute what I'm doing with those. The bottom stack is 2 1/2" by width of fabric strips. The other two piles are 5" squares, 6" squares and 4" by 6" rectangles. All of these will turn into charity quilts at some point.

Here is what I am doing with the random width by length of fabric strips.


I'm just sewing them together into charity quilt tops. I realized that if I really want to use up some of this fabric, the easiest thing to do is to just sew strips together. This way I don't create any scraps! The above quilt top is width of fabric by about 52".

I've got the binding halfway attached to my third of six projects I wanted to finish before the end of the year. I'm not going to make that goal but getting half of them done is better than none! I hope to get the binding finished up today and I'll show you that quilt when it is finished.

Hope you have a Happy New Year!


2 comments:

Denise in PA said...

Love your process with this, Lynn! Great idea to make using up stash easier. Happy New Year!

Mama Pea said...

You are so amazing. I wish I could get this serious about using my scraps/stash!!! LOL. Happy New Year, my good friend!