Tidying up and a new challenge!

Its a slight skewing of my New Years aims which I have pretty much stuck to, until now anyway, but I am faced with either sending loads of useable fabric to landfill or finding ways to make use of it and I hate planet killing waste. So today marks the start of a new adventure into finding uses for small pieces of fabric that I rediscovered hiding in my stash.

Well I say hiding but really they are just ignored and over looked. This is a rather large bag to hide really!

My stash busting efforts this year have not been in vain, but this big bag of bits should be used or a home found for them. I am currently even considering asking a local school if they could make use of some of it for the art classes. 

I have still got tons of fabric in my stash, and I was given money to buy more for my birthday, which of course I did, so my fabric stash has shrunk less ( so far this year) than I was intending. Anyway I was trying to fit some of these new fabrics on my shelves and realised I still have this bag of offcuts and possibly useful bits of fabric in a large bag.

The bag is intended for under bed storage but works well as a stash bag for bits and pieces that would otherwise keep slipping off shelves and make a mess and it can be pushed right behind all the nicer looking folded pieces of fabric that I bought more recently and want so much to get round to using. 

I can honesty say I have not actually opened this bag for at least 2 years so really I need to investigate.

So, Ihad a look at what exactly is in there because I honestly have no idea:

There turns out to be a few quite sizable pieces - like just under 2m of some red shiny ribbed fabric. Really this is just too large a piece to just throw away which is obviously why I decided to stash it in the first place. I recall making a top from this. I got rid of that top ages ago so this is now quite old and I need to use it up. It was very cheap Ebay fabric but that does not mean it should just be wasted and then throw into landfill. Thats just immoral and I do try not to waste things and not to pollute the planet. I bought this so must get round to using it and now seems the time to clear out all these useful offcuts and make something from them. And by so doing make space for my birthday present fabrics. Of course it will mean I cannot sew them right now but never mind.

Well there are other pieces in there too. Some scuba I made some skirt sets for a holiday that was 2 years ago etc etc.

Several differet types of synthetic plain black fabrics - surely I can do some kind of patchwork item with them at least?

Some satin I used to line a parcel bag at Christmas - was that 2 years or 3 years ago?

And assorted Tshirt fabrics and velvet bits. There is even some swimwear fabric in this bag!

I decided, well really, this bag needs to go. Some of the fabric offcuts go back years so its time to make some decisions. For me as a sewist thats hard. I hate to throw away any piece of fabric large enough for even a pin cushion so you can imagine the range of fabric bits I have here. And of course this is not the only bag I have like this. I have at least one more bag this size and two boxes filled with similar bits of left over offcuts.  

So instead of cutting out new items and thereby making even more offcuts I am now going to set myself the task of using these bits up even if I just make some leggings or a few vests or knickers from whats in this bag.

This might mean a deviation from my New Years plans but I might yet be able to icorporate this into them. I really don't know as yet.

I will probably start with the larger pieces and see what can be made and then go onto smaller pieces. This bag has caught me though and these fabrics will be used. I really feel so strongly it woudl be wrong to just throw them away and yet using them is a challenge. And thats why they have been sitting stashed all this time!

Still I am up for a challenge right now so we will see.

If I manage to make anything remotely wearable or useful from this lot I will post it because its going to take me some time to think of what and how to use at least some of these off cuts. Still this blog was begun as an adventure into sewing and I have felt for some time my ideas have become a bit stale. Time then to step up and try something a bit different.

Have a lovely week,

Bracken