My leftovers batting dilemma...and solution
Someone here mentioned putting fabric leftover strips (very tiny pieces) into a pillowcase, sewing it closed and taking it to the animal shelter. I realized that was something I could do with my batting scraps.
I had originally thought I might like to make up some of the pillow panels that I have and use this leftover batting as stuffing. Then, I had a lady make a whole quilt around a pillow panel, and decided that really, I'd rather do that. So, that still left me with my bags of leftover poly batting scraps from all those charity quilts I've been making. What to do?
So, I had my son bring them up to the main floor today (they've been in a basement guest room). I dumped them all out, and then took out all usable good-enough-to-cut-up pieces of fabric, and took the larger batting pieces, and went ahead and cut them into 6"squares for rag quilts that maybe I can teach some girls how to make. The leftovers batting and poly cotton blends went into either pillowcases, or pillowcase-like pieces of fabric I sewed together. Some smaller (very small--smaller than 1.5" width) cotton scraps went to the paper/burn/recycling bag.
I thought I'd end up with about 20 of these pillowcase type things. I'll take them to the animal shelter on Monday--there is one about 3 miles from here. I ended up with 35! My cats spent the day, until I pulled out the batting from under them--enjoying the batting and fabric scraps!
It isn't really what I would have preferred to do, but I do feel so relieved to have that HUGE task done. Now I know what to do with my scraps, as I go. I could have thrown them away, but couldn't bring myself to do that with something that seemed perfectly usable. Now I feel good about all those scraps, even if it did take all day to trim and sort and make pillowcase like things.
The pile (most of it):
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Cats enjoying it:
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Our cat who LOVES batting! He found it first. His name is Skagway.
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Finished 35 beds/pillows for the animals!
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Plus, I ended up with one kitchen sized trash bag full of fabric scraps needed to be trimmed into squares and strips, and 2 more bags of (large trash size) of cut up 6" squares batting which I did today for misc. rag quilts. I'll approach the two girls who often come over on Sunday afternoons and find out if they want to learn to make a rag quilt or two.
Aside from fixing dinner, a couple of gelatin desserts, and a couple of errands, this is what I spent the day doing!