I feel so wasteful now. I throw away the trimmings around my quilts...the small pieces. And now I've read about all the good uses for them. Shame on me.

I zig-zag stitch pieces together to get to the size I need. Or maybe use for stuffing pillows, pet beds.

Insanity I know - but I have a plastic bucket of diced up small smidgens that usually gets used up when making stuffed Christmas ornaments. Free stuffing!

Cotton Theory by Betty Cotton uses strips as small as 11/2 inches wide for blocks and is a quilt as you go method.

Do you knit? I'm knitting a bunny and I'm supposed to put a tennis ball in the body. I used larger needles and it doesn't snug up. You just gave me inspiration -- I can wrap the batting around the ball.

Long story short -- batting could be cut up and used to stuff things.

I sew the strips together and use for small wallhangings. If you do fairly heavy quilting, you can use it for a lap quilt as well - the heavier quilting makes up for the fact that sewn together batting doesn't actually stay together that great. Sounds strange, but some nursing home residents wouldn't use the quilts they were given because they were 'too nice'. By telling them that EVERYTHING was bits that were left over, they seem to feel better about it and will USE the item. I have a brother who is the same way. He's afraid of wrecking something I've made, so he gets stuff made totally from scraps so that he will use it.

You can also use small smidgens to stuff objects that won't be washed. Batting doesn't drain fast enough so can get a moldy smell if you use it in stuffed animals and such, but some things like ornaments never get washed anyway.

I save them too and practice make sure tension and stitches are ok

thank goodness I save all of mine too. I needed to correct a quillow by adding a border and the strips were exactly 3 inches for the pillow part and just long enough. I also use them in pincushions, and as some stuffings. The flatter kind like warm and natural I have also use to make book markers. There are alot of uses as mentioned above.

What a fantastic thread! One I have not seen yet it to make a design board with them. Purchase one of those big craft cards that takes pins, open out your stapler and nail those scraps on there. Then you have a board that you can audition pieces on, and it takes pins too!

If the scraps are wide enough (6") I use them in Kaye Woods 6 hr quilt. which is a quilt as you go. The real small pieces go into stuffing animals for the hospital or children at the abuse center or pillows