Tea Towel Take 1: I'm making scraps

I never pictured this would be my answer to any question, but last week I said these words out loud to my quilting buddies at our monthly guild meeting. I was ironing my stack of fabrics piece by piece and started slashing them totally randomly and when my friends asked what I was making I truthfully answered “I’m making scraps”.

Having been under the weather for quite a while, I could not seem to wrestle up enough energy to start digging through all my scrap boxes in search for suitable scraps for my made fabric (using made fabric in the quilt is a part of the Tea towel challenge). Instead I decided to use fabrics from a closet in my sewing room where my oldest fabric got stashed away years ago. I have been working my way through the content for a while and thought I would keep at it until everything gets used up or tossed away.

That first session at my guild meeting was spent ironing, slashing and piecing two and two pieces together. My box was quite full and my scraps rather messy when I unpacked it the other day, but still looking good.

For my next session I dug out my bag with almost empty spools,

made room for a cutting mat next to my machine and started adding pieces and strings, that is after ironing all the crumpled pieces.

Can you tell I’m a newbie at making fabric by the content of my waste bin? I find myself obsessively straightening up all the edges all the time which is a total waste so I won’t be doing that anymore.

Anyway, here’s the start of a few pieces of made fabrics.

I’m using quite large scraps or I’ll be making fabric way into 2014. Working with bright colours has been wonderful, but I think I’ll be enjoying the process even more without all the cutting...