Recycling and Remnants

I've been trying to neaten up my workroom lately.  This isn't easy for me - in addition to my natural packrat tendencies, I'm a world-class slob - but when the scraps and bits of fabric start to cover the cutting mat to the point where I end up using only a corner, it's time.

The small scraps get chucked out.  The larger ones go in a bag that will be heading to H&M one of these days for their fabric and clothing recycling program.  The big chunks get put away for other purposes.

The striped fabric here was left over from a long-sleeved t-shirt I made for myself back in the fall.  I meant to make a short-sleeve version with the leftovers, but then I saw photos of myself in the shirt and reconsidered.  It doesn't look bad in the mirror, but in photos, the lines blurred, making it look all gray and squishy, and making me look rather gray and squishy in it.  Not any 50-year-old's best look.

So, what to do with the leftovers?

I combined them with an extra-large black t-shirt I'd been gifted at a volunteer event, and turned them into this rag scarf.  Basically it's 5 layers of cotton jersey, narrow to wide, stitched down the middle and then cut into fringe.  The striped fabric is the middle layer on each side.

It's not my usual work, or for that matter, my usual taste, but I like it.  I only have the one for now, but I think I'll throw it around my neck and wear it to Sunday's show, just to get some feedback on it.

Making Space

You'd think with an entire designated sewing room, I'd have enough room for everything. Not so. The fabric shelves (wovens) are full. The cedar closet (home dec, mostly) is full. The fabric shelves (knits) are full. The boxe(s) under the table are full of clothes to be cut up. The woven remnant bin (hamper) is full. The knit remnant drawers are overflowing, which means I have no place to put interfacing, lining and all the other random bits of usefulness that will get lost in the room if they're not in their properly labeled drawers.


Do I need 2 drawers of knit remnants? It's not like I'm ever going to find a use for the small bits. I don't quilt but I save random pieces of woven fabric, just in case I ever start. What's my excuse for 3x3 INCH scraps of knit?

There is no excuse. And they're gone now.

As are a lot of the larger remnants. Since it was in the high 90s (or higher) on Friday, Saturday AND Sunday, I didn't want to be anywhere but the air-conditioned sewing room. Problem: the heat leached all creativity from my brain and I had no clue what I wanted to sew. I just wanted to make something to justify my existence in the room. So I pulled out all my knit remnants and checked to see how many of them were big enough for me to cut out my standard KS 3338 tshirt pattern which I can do even with a sunburned brain.

Turns out there were 5 shirts worth of remnants, and those are just the ones that could be sewn with black thread, which was what happened to be in both the machine and the coverstitch.

This group of shirts looks like a brief history of my sewing over last several years: the green and black graphic print is left over from the BWOF drape-front dress; the black and multi "stained glass" print left over from another BWOF dress; both V1250s had a yard left over; and the turquoise and black floral was a remnant from a sundress a few summers ago. That piece actually had a small rotary cutter nick in it which I didn't notice until I'd cut out the back; I solved that problem by cutting an oval in the shirt back and binding it like the neckline. It's a nice change and very breezy in our current horrible heat & humidity.

A few of these shirts might get passed along to my friend Dianne, who is my size but taller, which is okay since I tend to make my shirts long. I don't even care about wearing them; this was production sewing, sewing to sew, sewing to keep cool. Getting something out of it was just a plus, and now I have some drawer space to stash my interfacing so I know where it is when I'm back to sewing clothes that require it. (It's too hot to think about structured clothes - the August Burda came this weekend and while I think I liked a lot of things in it, it was too hot to think about anything other than stretchy, absorbent fabrics).

I'm embarrassed to say that if change over to white thread, I could have a few more shirts. Summer's not over yet, so I might just do that. It takes me no time to cut and sew this pattern, and in weather like this, frequent changes of top have become necessary.