Saturday, December 14, 2024

Why Save Tiny Fabric Scraps?

 Hi Friends!  Over the years many a quilter has questioned my obsession with saving the tiniest of scrap fabrics like the ones you see here.  These are the most recent scraps produced during the cutting of Part 3 of the 2024 Quiltville Old Town Mystery Quilt.


The answer is simple...If I think I can put a stitch in it, I keep it. The two metal tins below are sitting on the table next to my sewing machine.  This is where random triangles produced during cutting are stored until they can be stitched together.


This week while I was stitching together the most current scraps, I decided to check the metal tins for more.  I found a few rectangles from my Twinkler quilt. The flippy corners were stitch and cut before noticing I had stitched them to the wrong side of the rectangles.  These will be trimmed into HST's and the scraps put in the scrap bin for fabric less than a one inch.  As you can see in the red circles below, it doesn't need to be a perfect triangle to make a HST.  The odd shapes will square up just as easily as a perfect triangle.


Years of saving every last piece of fabric has produced over 4,000 HST's of various sizes.  They are trimmed to the largest size possible.  As small as 1" and as large as 5".


This week's trimming didn't go well due to my recent fall. My wrist is better, but it gave out after only trimming 6 HST's.  (3) 1.25" and (3) 1" HST's.


The remaining blocks to be trimmed were placed in a Ziplock baggie and hung in clear view so they are not forgotten.  Trimming as you go is so important.  Many of you may remember my ordeal with trimming the 4,000 a little at a time.  I don't ever want to do that again!


Here's why I keep them.  They make cute mini quilts.  The quilt below has (54) 2" blocks with 1/2" sashings.


I made it back in 2012 with scraps leftover from this quilt called Nostalgic Christmas by Lynn Wilder.  By the way, the little panel in the center of the blocks were printed from vintage images I found on Pinterest.


Here's another mini quilt made in 2014.  The tiny little HST's are 3/4" in the quilt.


The HST's were flippy corners from my Promenading Tulips quilt.


Of course, a larger quilt could be made from my stash of HST's.  Maybe in the new year after I finish a few other works in progress I'll do that very thing...maybe.





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5 comments:

  1. I keep my triangles, but haven't joined them to make HSTs . I'm thinking there is a scrappy quilt in my future with those. Probably not till the UFO list is a bit shorter.

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  2. So nice to see how you process and store them. I’ve been saving the triangles and have stacks of them. I’m considering sewing them together as my leader/enders for 2025. Pairing them up is something I can do at night when catching a movie with DH.

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  3. Beautiful! Yep, so worth the time and effort!!

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  4. I think triangles are worth saving.

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  5. very encouraging post. especially the reminder that both sides don't have to be triangles. your resulting quilts are so great. thanks for sharing. patti in florida pleal@cfl.rr.com

    ReplyDelete

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Happy Stitching! Lea Anne

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