Monday, October 05, 2009

Day 5 of Blogtoberfest - Wadding Woes.

Day five of Blogtoberfest brings a tutorial. Keeping in mind that tutorials are supposed to be helpful...... do you ever have a pile of wadding off cuts that are simply to good to throw away? In my sewing nook, such scraps serve either being used as trials to practice free motion quilting on, or reusing them as wadding in a quilt or this case a runner. Total tight arse Tuesday stuff, maybe I should have kept this topic for tomorrow?

Firstly lay out what scraps you have to work out how much you need to cover your project. I'm doing this for the strippy runner a few posts back. These 4 bits should do.

So I trim them...

And then sew them together. Easy peasy hey?

Use the widest zig zag stitch your machine can do. And select the zig zag stitch that isn't a full stitch, the one that uses 3 stitches to make each zig.

And then sit back and admire how you have stuffed it up and wonder how on earth did that one bit gather on you??! Ponder how in the past it has worked perfectly and now when it comes to blogging a tutorial, you stuff it up! Ponder over if you can be bothered to unpick it and do it again..... Ponder if you can still get away with it...... Ponder over maybe just cutting a chunk out of your 4 meters of wadding might have been the best way to go.....

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

:) I guess I'm "thrifty" too - my last quilt was made entirely of off-cuts of batting and I feel no shame about this at all - only wonder that more people don't do it. :)

Lauren The Artist said...

I do that with all my batting scraps. I have a whole separate scrap area just for batting scraps. I'll have to try the stitched zig-zag, rather than the ole regular zig-zag next time.

Ann said...

LOL!What a great post - in more senses! I needed that, thanks :))

Sheridan said...

Hooray! An honest and entertaining tutorial! Love it!

Anonymous said...

I keep all my batting scraps too - some of them are so small but I dont have the heart to throw them away - I must have bags fulls of the stuff!! But if I dont use them on a quilt I have decided that this year all the scraps may become "snow" under the christmas tree - that's going to be fun with a 2 year old!!! :)

AJ said...

I hand-sew mine together...never thought to use the machine...D'oh!

Andi said...

I just love a funny ending!!!

Emma said...

I often piece mine, too. And this happens to me sometimes, too. I suspect it's when one piece is along the 'grain' and the other across it. If you haven't already fixed it, I've found the easiest way (assuming you have 1/2in to spare) is to trim either side of the stitching and resew it, taking extra care! I'm considering marking the direction of the selvage on my scraps from now on.

thehummingcat said...

Or you could cut into 5" or 6" squares and give to your sister!

Selina said...

I am far too scared to try this, then again, what have I got to lose! Thanks for the giggle!

Mom said...

I do this ALL the time. There's never anything except a cut of thread that goes to waste in my studio! I cannot say however that I run into problems. I use a basic wide zigzag and be sure to rotary cut the edges of the batts. It always comes out flat and just like a whole piece of batting in the finished piece. Try again...it's a good thing for the scraps :-)

Jenny said...

goodness, Ive been wondering if i can machine stitch binding, thanks for showing me that i can!