Making Scrap Quilts with Torn Bits and Strips
Heather ThomasHeather Thomas talks about using torn bits and scraps of leftover fabric on smaller quilting projects to create fun, unique pieces. She shows several examples of her own work, including a project that she based off of her daughter’s scribbling and a few pieces that contain schlubs, or thread that gets left behind in the dryer.
Some of those quilters like to keep every little scrap we've ever made when we're making out quilts. And some of us throw everything away because we can't imagine having to have all these little baggies filled with fabric scraps. I'm kind of in the middle. I keep the scraps from the really pretty fabrics and the rest I kind of check but I really have learned that though I'm not an applicator anymore, it's nice having some of those little pieces around and you can actually create whole pieces of art just from those scraps. For this piece my daughter had drawn some pages when she was home sick one day from school and I decided they would make a really fun little art quilt.
So I grabbed those pages and went through my scrap bag and cut and ripped and just had some fun with the color. So as we looking here you can see that none of these things are pieced. They're just laid on top of each other and, and then stitched. But they're all just little bits, this all these wonderful little bits of fabric. And this is probably the largest pieces I have in this, in this little art quilt.
And some of them are cut with specialty tools. Others are just free hand cut. Most of them are just free hand cut just utilizing whatever little bit of fabric that I had left. I really like working with little bits these days. I didn't think I was gonna be that kind of a quilter but the smaller your work becomes and minds become pretty darn small.
The more those little bits and pieces are really useful. Like with this guy my whole background here is made from small little bits of the gray and neutral colored fabrics. They're just laid on top of each other and then heavily quilted. And then more little bits, these warm colored sticks if you will, these long strips were just laid down and then top stitched on, and then some more fun quilting went on top of that, but it's just scraps. Here this is even more fun.
Here I just cut out this wonderful squirly shape from a piece of Misty Fuse and ironed it to this background and then I just, with my rotary cutter cut my small little bits into even smaller bits and layered them all on top of that Misty Fuse and ironed them in place and then quilted it. And it's just a really fun way to basically build a fabric on my quilt. This one I really like. I was taking this drawing class. I wanted to draw on fabric and when I got done I had this beautiful little face with no hair.
And so I just grabbed all my fabrics that I could in this wonderful yellow, orange, orange colorway and ripped a whole bunch of strips. And they have this wonderful natural edge and all this movement in here and I just added that hair in strips of the leftover fabric. Now it's not just strips, it's also little bits too. And we all, if we prewash our fabrics end up with this in our washer and dryer. And these are, some people call them slubs.
Some people call them thread bits or whatever. I just call them a wonderful bag of color. And so this is just the threads that come off the edges of the fabrics out of the washing machine. And I've started really using them a lot. In this piece you can see them here right down the middle.
And in this piece, they're right down here. Isn't that beautiful, wonderful, wonderful texture there. I love this one. It just looks like fire here and then the quilting adds to that fire look, and I've just, glommed them down on the quilt and then stitched over them and they just full of texture. And here I use them for my tree, this wonderful multicolor tree.
And I just grabbed all the colors I could think of and dropped them in place on top of the trunk and then just stitch them down. They're really useful. They're very fun. Now I'm one of those girls who doesn't like to have tons of stuff around. So this is my bag of slubs.
I don't have a whole lot of them. And when my bag gets full, I give them to my friends who aren't smart enough to keep their slubs. But I think you can see here how you can create whole pieces of art from your quilt, unquilt garbage little pieces of fabric, a little pieces of thread and make some really, really cool things with them. So consider keeping a little stash of that garbage in your studio to turn to when you wanna make something quick and fast.
Heather I always love your videos! I may have to start prewashing!! Question: what do you do with all your finished pieces?
Looking forward to this activity
Wow, how creative you are Ms. Heather!
How do you use the misty fuse?
Heather, I have been really "blown out of the water" by the work you have shown in this video. It is truly magic! I now feel so inspired, thank you very, very much...Meg
Hi Heather, I really love your art quilts!!!
I think you are a very talented person and i love what you do and the way you use fabric, colours, stitches, shapes and all kind of various material to create these awesome pieces of art.
Can you be be specific about how you sew over the dryer scraps? Don't all the threads get tangled up in the presser foot? Thanks :)
what kind of batting do you use for these small quilts?
Love these ideas. I am definitely going to try these out.