What To Do with The Scraps left over from using The Scraps!

 It sounds a bit daft doesn't it, how can you have scraps of scraps?  Well I spent a day this week doing lots of free motion machine embroidery.  This is done with a special foot on an ordinary sewing machine, you take the stitch length to zero and lower the feed dogs and then off you go. There is a photo of me embroidering like this further down this post.

I save as much fabric as I can when dressmaking or doing alterations.  I keep them all boxed in colour order and getting them out is always a very messy affair.  I just don't seem to have the ability to do it any other way.  So while making these house and flower appliques to go onto cards (visit my folksy shop here if you want to see the end products) I always acquire little scraps that still have bond-a-web attached to them.

I cut off fabric that hasn't got bond-a-web on it and that either goes in the bin or back into the scrap box. The funny shaped pieces I have left have the paper removed from them, cut if needed, overlapped so you can't see the felt that I'm using to stabilize them on and iron them on.

I then use a stencil to mark out the shape I want to embroider in this case it was a heart.

Then its time to embroider using both hands to move the fabric where I want to stitch.

I don't always use a stencil but especially when I'm doing a few things the same I find the stencil helps.

After sewing them they get cut out and backed with another piece of felt.  I used a glue gun as was feeling lazy but it is much nicer if before you cut them out you sew around the piece again with the backing fabric attached.  I then made them into keyrings as you can see if the first photo.  So there you go making something out of the scraps saved from scraps!!!

Happy Crafting xxxx