What to do with Tiny Fabric Scraps – creating your very own fabric

In my way with words, I must convey to you the excitement I felt making today’s craft. By chance I fell across the Pinterest pin for this – another serendipitous moment for sure. Imagine a plethora of fabric snippets destined for not a great deal else other than perhaps the stuffing in a pillow. Now allow your imagination to drift to one of the most enjoyable creative processes with all those snippets. Today I am going to show you what to do with tiny fabric scraps. When you’ve poured your coffee come with me; this I promise you is quite something else…

With nothing more than a pile of trimming ends and waste, you can create your very own unique piece of fabric. Follow this process for what to do with tiny fabric scraps, beginning with your own small mountain of pieces and you will actually create fabric no one else has. One off fabric to work your crafting magic with. You will need a sewing machine for this craft so if you don’t have one, allow me this moment to offer a few solutions. Beg, borrow, steal or buy one. You truly do not want to miss out on this.

Start with a lone colour or a flamboyant rainbow mix, you choose.

Any little sliver of lace, thread, ribbon or material works and in my world, a variety of pretty vintage dishes, each spilling over with exciting treasures, now sit on the craft room window ledge waiting for their moment. Even ends of sewing cotton work for this craft. If perhaps like me you enjoy typing a quote or two onto your fabrics, there’s a place for those as well. And when the colourful odds and ends have mounted up, another glorious piece of homemade fabric is in the making. Not surprisingly, I chose all the pinks for my first attempt. And please note, this was my very first attempt; delighted doesn’t cut it.

Choose a piece of backing fabric. I think mine is a calico of some sort. It’s a large end of roll piece I inherited way back when and I have not personally tried another backing fabric for this project. I have seen others used elsewhere and cannot imagine why a lightweight cotton or linen would not yield similar results.

Scatter your scraps over your backing fabric covering as much of the material as you can, although take care to ensure the layer is not too thick; you will see why soon. Now take a sheet of water-soluble fabric and lay over the top of your scraps. Sometimes this medium is clear like mine, sometimes white. Water-soluble fabric was an investment piece for me since I had never heard of it before and this pack does go a long way. It also appears to have a great many more uses, so there will be more new discoveries and blogs I am sure.

Your next job is to pin at random, everything together and then the fun begins. Using a strongish thread, coloured or plain – I used pink – sew all over the soluble fabric any way you choose. Backwards, forwards, left and right and unhunch those shoulders and get carried away with the entire blissful process. Moments of crazy and wild abandon on the machine. No straight edges, no measurements, no rules. Quite liberating for a self confessed, super organised control freak I can tell you. I have seen on a video somewhere this stage carried out with an embroidery foot. I don’t have one (yet) so I switched my machine to a decorative stitch on offer. I did have to play around a little until the stitch tension and length were quite right for my fabric, which is why you don’t want your trimming pile to be too thick.

Try to ensure your gaps are not too gappy since the fabric scraps will come away if not secured within your many stitches.

Then when you are satisfied with your work, rinse the entire piece under a cool tap until, like magic, the water-soluble fabric simply disappears. Make sure you’ve made a thorough job of rinsing and then leave your fabric somewhere to dry out. Overnight if you have any patience. Mine was placed on top of a hot radiator and dry in a matter of hours. No patience at all.

And just look at this result. Even typing this I am bubbling over with excitement. Can you imagine all the possibilities for your new fabric? My mind went into overdrive. I will never again wonder what to do with tiny fabric scraps.

I almost love the new fabric too much to use which is typical of the old me. The one that saves new tea towels ‘for best’ because they are too pretty to dry the dishes. Yet we evolve as human kind and there is no more ‘best’ for me. Best is for every day. And so far, I’ve added pieces to this, I have used a slice to make a heavenly craft – coming soon (there is a hidden clue in there by the way) a beautiful floral page has been created for this – coming soon as well. And there is a leftover piece which sits resplendent on top of a pile of vintage fabrics all vying for my attention and until I decide it’s final purpose, my scrap fabric will remain a thing of beauty and I shall simply admire it. Often.

I’m currently working with blues; tartans and stripes, soft blues and even a dash of vivid cobalt, my favourite blue of them all, to which I’ve added a few selvedge edges of materials I’ve stashed away, not having known then what their fate might be. And growing and fading slightly on the windowsill on another pretty vintage plate, are bits of milky creams and taupe, pale greys and hues of every single white piece I have.

To enjoy a creative process is in itself a triumph, what a treat it is to be rewarded with one-of-a-kind fabrics. Now, what to do with tiny fabric scraps for you? What colour will you start with? And when you’ve created your own unique fabric, what will it become? Until next week x

I hope you enjoyed today’s craft which although totally new to me, is not entirely new to a great many others judging by the numbers in a google search. I was inspired myself, by this particular post