I’ve had some seriously disconnected days… can’t seem to get anything started or finished. Sold the last of the finished dressers and am down to only having my restored chandelier left for sale. Did manage to keep an eye on the free list on CraigsList and have a garage full of future projects.
While I’ve been meandering, I have been “testing” myself on just how little I can go with fabric pieces by doing some piecing and should be ready to reveal my final decision in the next day or so. I mean, how small of a scrap piece would you save?
Picked up six more pairs of jeans to harvest denim for the rag rug I plan to make. This is what six pairs of larger than 40 waist sized jeans boils down to:
You can check out my instructions on how to get the most out of a pair of blue jeans here. I also have the same instructions on instructables.com and can see it here.
Other than the denim and the scrap piecing, I’ve been done a little goofing around with felt. I found a pattern online for this cute little minion (it seems everything everywhere is about those little yellow guys), so I whipped one up.
Some of the directions weren’t all that good and neither was the pattern… I am thinking about how I can make my own pattern for a slightly larger version of this guy. I know this photo doesn’t allow for size comparison, but he is about 6″ from top of his head to bottom. I’d like to make one maybe 50% larger… I even managed to find larger sized eyes. I want to do something different with his arms and legs, as I didn’t care for how they came out in this version. Even after modifying his boots to be more 3D-ish, I still don’t like it. I want to make his feet (boots) and hands (gloves) out of leather, which means it is going to have to be larger to work with.
I have been trying to get our workplace in the garage into order. I picked up a deeper shelved piece and want to get things squared away before we get started on the next dozen or so projects. The Kid also managed to finally get a way to store our pipe clamps so that they won’t be constantly in the way or being knocked over.
I am determined to get this garage into a more useable and convertible space. There is still plenty of space on this wall which is the back side of the work area.
I also have an area that I want to be able to use for a paint booth and picked up heavy plastic sheeting a while back to use as “curtains” to contain the over-spray but nothing that is “permanent” so that I can still use the stall to park my car (sometimes in the Midwest, it is important to be able to garage your vehicles, like yesterday’s tornado warnings). Once situated – and it shouldn’t take long – we can get moving on the new pieces.
You cannot imagine how long it has taken me to write these words! Geez, I hope soon to get my focus and motivation back!
On My Creative Side 
I’ve been working on some scrap projects, too, and wondering how small is too small to keep. I ran across this technique the other day and it would work with REALLY small pieces: http://www.stitchedincolor.com/2011/03/all-about-ticker-tape.html. I’ve started a box of really small scraps and another of fabric selvages. The problem is that the more I look into things to make with scraps, the more I find and the smaller the usable scrap size gets, so my scrap stash is effectively growing. 😉
So, tell me… just how small are these pieces. Photos can be deceiving without something to judge size by. And I know what you mean about your stash growing… holy cow! It now seems that I don’t throw away anything! Yikes! The funny thing is that it seems to take longer working with the smaller pieces, it is all that starting and stopping. I am planning to write about the smaller pieces in the next post and show just how small I am using!
She says they can be as small as 1/2 inch. This gives a better sense of scale (these are 16″ x 20″ blocks): http://www.stitchedincolor.com/2011/03/bottled-rainbows-how-to-make.html. I hear you on how slow and inefficient this kind of piecing seems to be . . . you are saving some time with the Quilt As You Go thing, though. I have a vague recollection of seeing a raw-edge applique technique where you just tack the pieces down somehow and then quilt the whole thing, so you could always do something like that. I’m really tempted by that Bottled Rainbows quilt, though . . . .
I had to go search for ‘bottled rainbow quilt’ and I agree with you! That seems like something you could work on a little bit at a time (my favorite kind). I’ve been sewing this morning and realize that most of my tiny scraps come in twos and got to thinking maybe we could do a scrap trade? Let me know if you would be up for it? 🙂