All this from scraps?

I'm spending the day banking back and forth between sorting/cleaning the studio and sewing. When you sort, it brings lots of projects to mind, and it takes great strength not to drop everything and sew on them! Wips, UFOs, bits and pieces, leftovers, scraps too small to keep that need sewing.

Yesterday, I sorted the washed scraps given me by friends. Yep, I even wash scraps. I am pretty sensitive to chemicals, so even little pieces must be washed before the iron hits them. This is not hard. A mesh wash bag holds lots of little pieces safely in the washing machine. I even have one with four little compartments.  Once washed and out of the dryer, I sort by color and press them and put them in the color bins. This is part of my process, the calming part where I get to play with color, see shape and pattern and plan the next thing.
Here is a picture of the stacks before putting them away.

 I love to sew little odd shapes to other odd shapes and see what comes of it. Usually it's gorgeous and turns itself magically into something beautiful.

I do run a workshop in this technique, check the page Workshops and lectures

Before the green stack was put away I pulled out these tiny little pieces and played.

 I started sewing them, until I saw a leaf, to go with two other leaves that have been hanging around the design wall for weeks.
I might have to stop cleaning again and sew these into something!


During the sorting I ran across some painted flower petals.
Now, I had already put away my painted bits and pieces and didn't want to drag that bag back out, so I sat down and started playing with these!

Ah the road to order is never straight! Why, just around a bend there were flowers to be arranged and sewn. I glued the overlaps of two of them, and gathered some others up under the machine needle and stitched them into a cool textured lumpy organic piece that will no doubt go on something later.

 For now, I must get back to the excitement of sewing on my scraps. Maybe I'll sacrifice one of my hand dyed half yards to the two lovely flowers at the left. Oh, joy! Think of all the threadwork to come! Whee!!

I absolutely must show you the cow coasters that my new blog friend Linda Cline sent! They are waaaaay too cool to mess up with possible spills, heh, heh.
Or maybe I'll just let myself use them, and ENJOY (my word of the year) them freely. She was so kind as to include some yardage with the images printed on it so I am all kind of jazzed to make that into something cool. Wonder what I'll make...
My gratitude to Linda (lindas blog) and lookie there folks, I have another cool connection story. It's these connections between us that make life sweet.

LeeAnna