Recycling

[offcntr]

Like anyone who's done a craft, ever, I have leftovers. Left over scraps of wood from carpentry projects, bits and bobs of paper from bookbinding, inks and paints and art pads from art projects. Molds, sprigs, stamps and partial bags of different clay bodies out in the studio. And fabric.

So much fabric.

I've never been a quilter, really. I don't have a closet full of Fat Quarters (quarter-yard pieces that the fabric store stocks by the thousands to ensnare the unwitting). My sewing tends toward clothing--shirts, blouses, slacks and shorts--and teddy bears. So my closet is full of tubs of fake fur, poly fill, and boxes with all the tangled bits and pieces of woven cotton fabric left from cutting out pattern pieces, the odd shaped bits that seemed potentially useful, or at least too big to throw away. Twenty years of scraps and remnants tend to build up after a while.

At one point, maybe a decade ago, I tried to put them to use. Cut them into strips, sewed them together, then cut out triangles that I further stitched into 12-inch squares. Figured with time, I'd eventually have enough to make a quilt or throw or comforter.

I managed to finish all of four, before getting side-tracked, most likely back into the pottery studio.

They've been in the bottom drawer of my dresser ever since, waiting for the moment I'd have time and energy to make more. And as I mentioned earlier, I'd just gone through the entire fabric closet recently, looking for larger scraps Denise could use for book cloth. So I figured what the heck, let's see if I can put my enforced leisure time to good use and clean up this mess. At the very least, I'll have more squares to put back in the drawer.