Scrap Stash Organization

Hi! I am so happy to say that I finally, FINALLY got my large scrap stash organized.

I prefer not to throw anything out that could be put to good use, and I am thankfully blessed with the good sense to be able to imagine a use for any scrap. But having all my many scraps of all different sizes and shapes and contents stuffed into a big "barrel" pop-up hamper was definitely not working for me!

I have worked so hard on getting and keeping my sewing room clean and organized, and this was the last problem to solve. I want to make art quilts to raise money for Alzheimer's (see the link in my sidebar), but I have been avoiding making any scrap projects because the barrel issue made such a mess. First, let me show how it's all better now:

Here is a picture I took the last time I made a scrap project, to show what a ridiculous mess this scrap storage system would make.  Before I moved the scraps up to the barrel, I used a smaller version of this messy system, a scrap bag or basket.  This has always been a mess and much less than optimally organized!

I love keeping my sewing room clean and organized and I am so glad I finally got this big problem solved!

I searched around on the internet for various scrap management ideas and I stopped to read this post at quiltville, Scrap User's Organization System.  When I sew her system, I thought AHA!

So I decided my baby son really didn't need those plastic drawers in his closet, and that I needed them more!

Here's how I sorted my crazy mess of scraps into a workable order:

 
The top drawer holds red, orange, yellow, purple, and black and brown quilter's cotton scraps.  I see now that they are not in that order!  I was working quickly to get this done.  It took me a full day and a half to do this project, by the way.

I have a lot of blue and green cotton scraps, as these are my favorite colors- so they each got a bin.  The pink bin holds both pink scraps, and also pink pieces that are as big as a full yard.  The smaller bins hold small scraps of felt and silk.  I don't actually keep the bins on top of the drawer unit, but rather stash them neatly beneath my sewing table, which is well within arms length.  I can pull them out and put them on top when I need to work with them.

This middle drawer holds "crumbs:"  These are little small scraps to be used for string piecing and such.  The maximum size for the Alzheimer's Art Quilts is, I think, 10 by 12 inches, so I know I will be able to make something using even the smallest crumbs.  These small scraps are confined using a white open bin, so that this drawer can also hold muslin and batting scraps that can be used in making these small quilts or other little scrap projects (such as my favorite scrap project, soft crazy quilted color books for baby)..

This bottom drawer holds scraps from sheets I have already cut, a bag of plaid scraps, and a ziploc with denim and corduroy scraps, as well as some patterned white and light neutral quilter's cottons.  So it is kindof a miscellaneous drawer.

I had a lot of scrap knits, but no good bin to fit them; this reusable bag is the perfect size.  So for now, the knit scraps are in here, stashed under the sewing table next to the bins.

There is a couple more categories of scraps that I save.  One is the "stuffing scraps."  I stuff tiny pieces, even thread chains and serger trimmings, and small batting scraps, etc, into a drawstring garbage bag, which I use for stuffing things like pillows and toys.  Someone recently gave me an antique wardrobe which I am using as my "sewing room closet," although it doesn't fit in the sewing room and is at the end of our hall instead.  That "closet" holds the bag of stuffing scraps, a bag of larger felt scraps, and also some sheets I haven't cut yet, interfacings, and some other things.

I also have two large shoebox bins, one holds apparel fabric scraps for making Barbie doll clothes, and the other has novelty scraps, which I am collecting to make an I-spy/ Alphabet quilt sometime soon.

The last step to make this system workable is one more basket, empty now.  This is also stashed under my sewing table and I can use this to store daily scraps in for quick daily cleaning of my mess, and then sort these away every week or month or whenever.

It can be a good, useful, and productive thing to save and use lots of scraps, but this will work out MUCH better and be easier to do when the stash is workably organized.  Towards that end,  I hope this post is helpful!

Have a great day!
Millie

Grandmother's Quilts

For Mother's Day, today, I gave my mother and Mr. Green's mother baby quilts that I made from blocks left by their mamas.  Both of these dear grandmothers left a small stack of pieced blocks, and last year they were given to me.  So I arranged and sewed together the blocks, and because in both cases there were less than enough blocks for a whole quilt, I added borders. 

My husband's grandmother hand sewed the blocks in the quilt pictured above.  I used the machine to sew them together and quilt it.  I just love the pink, blue, and red color scheme, which is one I never would have thought to use.  I didn't have enough of one binding for the whole quilt, and so I improvised using two blues! 

The blue striped border continues around all four sides on this quilt.  The blocks in the middle of this one were made by my great great grandmother, who was also my mama's "mother," through adoption.  She passed away many years ago.  When my mother gave me her quilting things recently and I saw these blocks, memories came flooding back.  The fabric and color choices in this quilt could have only been chosen by her!  I can remember seeing her hanging out laundry wearing a dress made from one of these fabrics.

I keep calling these grandmother quilts because they were started by grandmothers and I gave them to grandmothers, for holding new grandchildren.  I made a bit of a mess in the quilting of these, as I always do- I love making patchwork, but not quilting as much.  They turned out just fine, though, really.  Both our mothers seemed pleased, and I feel pleased as punch to have finished these projects which were started by others so many years ago.

I hope all of you who are mothers have had an amazing mother's day this year!

Sharing Garden Pictures: First Fruits 2011

Strawberries are so super easy to grow; just be sure to give them plenty of room because they spread a lot every summer.  That is chocolate mint in the picture as well.  I decided to let it run like a weed in our herb bed and I have not regretted it.  This chocolate mint seems both the sweetest and tastiest of the mints, and it also seems happier and more lush in my garden than regular peppermint or spearmint.

Speaking of strawberries by the way, I have recently discovered how easy it is to make chocolate covered strawberries, and this has been our favorite sweet treat this spring.  To make them, I just empty a cup or so of semi-sweet chocolate chips (not Nestle!) into a glass measuring cup and melt them in the microwave.  On my microwave, this takes 3 30 second cycles (stir between each 30 second nuking).  Then you just dip the berries in he smooth melted chocolate and set them on wax paper.  Stick them in the refrigerator to chill; it really only takes a few minutes for the chocolate to harden.  Share them with someone you love, and enjoy!  Strawberries are loaded with healthy goodness, and dark chocolate has antioxidants and bromine and other good stuff for your heart....so I consider these to be a health food and we enjoy them often without guilt!

These blueberries are of the Emerald variety.  We bought four varieties of blueberries in the fall, and this variety has the largest berries.  I wonder how long they will take to turn blue!

Husky Cherry Tomatoes.  I know some folks in more northern latitudes may feel amazed to see our tomatoes fruiting already, but please realize that it gets so hot here that our plants peter out (at 10 feet tall, sometimes) usually in late July, and then we will have no fresh tomatoes until late September or so, if we plant a second crop. It looks like this year I might succeed in having lettuce and tomatoes to harvest together.  This is hard to do here as it is quickly too hot for the lettuce, which bolts to seed.  Last year they almost missed each other- tomatoes seem to take a while to ripen and as the first tomatoes were ripening on the plants, the lettuce was starting to bolt.  I think we got one big salad for a party, and then the lettuce was done just as the tomatoes got started.  This year I planted some lettuce later than usual, chose an all-season mix, and knock on wood, we should have a few weeks of lettuce and tomatoes harvested together for salads.

These are a variety of Passionflower that do not fruit, unfortunately.  But the flowers are amazing and the vines seem happy and want to run rampant in this hot and humid climate.

I hope to make time for a fun sewing post soon.  Until then, Happy Growing!

A Dress for Every Girl Around the World

Dress A Girl Around The World is an organization that I was glad to learn about, and I wanted to make sure that you all know about it, too.  The flyer above says "Imagine a world where every little girl owned at least one dress."  It is a sad thought that there are little girls who don't own a single dress, and this is something that we CAN do something about!  I am so happy to make pillowcase dresses to send to this organization, and I bet you all would like to do the same.

Pillowcase dresses are SUPER EASY to sew, as I have recently discovered.  You don't have to start with a pillowcase, but if you do they make up in about ten minutes.  You can make them in the traditional way, using bias strips under the arms and casings at the top:

Or you can use elastic across the top, and put casings under the arms, instead:

This didn't work that well for me, and I will never try to put casings under the arms again!  It would be better to use bias here, too; here are easy instructions at Rostitchery for a "safer pillowcase dress."
I will make the next ones this way, for sure.

As I said, you don't have to start with a pillowcase; you could start with a yard (or a bit less) of fabric, or even make one from a skirt:

So, I am sending these off to Dress a Girl Around the World now (after I clip those threads), but I plan to make more and better dresses soon, and send more again later.  I hope some of you will sew some pretty dresses to send for other little girls, too.  Please and thank you.

Happy Sewing!

Spring Gardening

It's March already, and as we live on the warm Gulf Coast, our garden is already planted.  We are still waiting to see our zucchini and squash seeds break through the ground, but most everything else is up.  I planted a lot of heirloom tomatoes and pepper seeds, as well as quite a few hybrid peppers, too, in pots in the garden, but we also bought some seedlings from the garden center.

Here is the hot pepper patch so far:

There are Cayenne, Hot Bananas, Mammoth Jalapenos, and something known as "world's hottest," I think those are Habaneros.

And here are the sweet peppers so far, 3 each of green. yellow, and red:

There is space in between them for the seedlings I am growing, mostly a carnival mix of many colors of bells, along with my favorite heirloom, Chinese Giant.

And the tomatoes are on the other side in this garden.

So the back 10x12 garden will be full of tomatoes and peppers this year (and basil), and what was the pepper and tomato garden last year now has zucchini and squash, zinnias, black beans, garlic, sunflowers, chard, sequoia beans, and will have corn and eggplant (and more zinnias).  I am not showing pictures of that garden because it is just coming up (except for the garlic, which is a foot tall already).  It also is littered with leaves.  There is a Live Oak tree in my side yard that sheds its leaves in spring right onto that garden.  Since we planted the seeds we are having to hand pick the leaves frequently so that the seedlings do not get smothered.  This little garden is fenced in, though, so we are about to run a screen over the top and eliminate this problem.

I haven't planted luffa or pole beans yet, as we want to build a new trellis for these.

I did take some pictures in the herb bed.  The echinacea is up.

And here is a comfrey emerging:

This other comfrey is hardier and leafed out already:

The bee balm sure has spread and is looking nice.  I hope it will finally flower this year; I have had lovely flowers from bee balms in other yards, but it has not flowered at this address yet.  Bee balm is also known as Oswego Tea, by the way, and the strangely shaped flowers are really interesting.  I think it likes more shade than it gets in my yard.

The stevia is up and growing; it grows really tall and flowers; I want to better about using this herb (for sweetening tea) this year.

Oregano, one of a couple clumps in the perennial bed:

Lemon balm, aka Melissa:

The pineapple sage has not yet come back!

Pineapple Sage is my favorite herb in this garden, and we have been growing it here for 4 years; last year it was a huge bush with at least a 5 foot diameter all around, including tall.  It is the last thing to flower in the winter, and so I am thinking it is late to come back...but I read last year on the internet that sometimes they just don't come back, and so we are worried.  We bought a new one just in case:

Look how much blueberry flowers look like blueberries!

Here are my zinnias.  I planted a ton of them in pots to put in the garden later.  They are also springing up as volunteers in 2 of the three gardens and I haven't pulled any yet.  I love zinnias :)

And here is a surprise.  We have been shocked by this Gerber Daisy, which has not seemed very happy since we bought it a couple or more years ago.  It seems happy now:

That looks like summertime to me, but I took the photo today!
What are you planting in your garden this spring?