The Ubiquitous Scrap Bag

Scraps. Bags and bins and boxes and baskets and piles of them, threatening to edge me out of my studio. Yikes! O, but each and every fragment of them is so lovely, too precious to chuck. Thank the muses, I've had some scrap-inspiration of late. First, I got this crazy idea to sew all the tiniest scraps of wool onto a large piece of backing fabric.

I randomly grabbed bits from the scrap bin and attached them where they seemed to fit. This became a rug.

The size of it (39"x26") made it quite awkward to sew, and it seemed to take a long time before I was able to completely cover the backing fabric. There was something strangely compelling, though, about sewing all those stitches, fastening down all those tiny scraps, creating something larger, useful, and (to me, anyway) very lovely. This rug is one of my favorite things I've made recently. Amazingly, after all of that, I was still excited about sewing tiny little scraps to a piece of cloth backing. I thought that if I wanted to make another rug, I'd sew up smaller pieces, say, 15"x20" or so, and then sew them together to make a larger piece. These smaller experiments sew up fairly quickly. In fact, they are rather the size of placemats. Hmmm. So now I'm being more intentional with my use of color. These blue ones remind me of water. The backs are interesting, too. I'm still excited about it! I've been cutting them up and making hats and clothing. Funny thing is, there are still so many bins of scraps piled about...I thought I was using them up, but... it seems instead that they are multiplying behind my back.