Monday, August 09, 2010

Pruning my fabric stash for a good cause

A large portion of this last weekend was spent cleaning out and reorganizing all the stuff in the closet of Safety Pin Studio.  Now that the studio is clean and neat, the state of the closet started eating away at me.  When we moved in, I was more concerned with getting things put away and didn't always pay enough attention to where things were kept nor to how accessible they were.  I've now got all the supplies I need for stamping under the work table.  Sewing and drawing supplies are stored together in the closet and are easily accessible.  I also got some no-skid shelf liner to put under the ironing board and now it doesn't move around on the work table.   There is more floor space around the work table and I have begun to prune my fabric stash.

With the Piedmont Quilters Guild show coming up in October, I decided that one of the ways I can help is by cutting fat quarters and making charm square packs for the boutique from my fabric stash.  Many of the canvas boxes will not close because there is just too much fabric inside.
I did a little investigating online and found that most charm square packs have 30 pieces of fabric in them--either all unique or a small variety with duplications.  Since most charm  squares are pinked, it was also an opportunity to use my pinking rotary cutter.




Here's the pinking blade and what it does.


First I pull out thirty different fabrics from each color bin.  You will remember that I have a great deal of orange because of Alexis' wedding bento box quilt.


In addition to cutting charm squares, I also cut a certain number of fat quarters.


Once I've got thirty squares cut, I make a wrapper for them and then I'm on to another color.


The newly pruned orange bin is not only neat, but will now close.

2 comments:

jeanettesquiltin said...

Absolutely loving the orange!!!

Quilted Librarian said...

Thanks, Jeanette,
It was a job to collect, let me tell you.
all the best,
Dana