Not all that long ago quilt batting was pretty hard to get a hold of and I was nearly out. Luckily at the same time my trimmed quilt edges of excess fabric and batting was piling up in my sewing room. And I needed to make some quilts. 😉 The obvious thing to do was to take the strips apart and piece the batting after cutting away any overage quilting stitches.
If you take quilts to a longarmer, you know about the extra 4″ of backing needed all around for loading on the machine. I noticed sometimes my longarmer loaded it more to one side leaving some pretty wide strips when completed. Either way, those strips can add up to a lot of fabric!
Here I go again with the waste issue, but I never throw these materials away, I always take the time to separate them out.
My latest fabric/batting stack consisted of four quilts worth—one longarmed queen size and three throws I quilted myself. After removing the fabric, this is what I ended up with…
And after a bit more effort—pressing and cutting strips to the biggest size I could get—this was the end result…
I’m not going to deny this project took me a few hours, but now I have a lot of precut fabric on hand that would’ve been a shame to toss. It was definitely worth the effort and what a great way to use materials on hand.
Out of the batting, I was able to piece enough to make one throw quilt, one crib size quilt and two baby quilts. And, as of today, batting is once again on backorder.
If you’ve got a stack of edges piling up, consider their reuse. Save and cut that fabric, your future self will thank you. 🙂
Monday Morning Designs 