MAKING DO

One of my blogger friends used this button recently to talk about not buying more fabric until she had used up some of her stash.  She challenged all of us to join in the Making Do! project.  I took the button and decided to use it whenever I wanted to pull from my stash, or to use some leftover blocks, or to make a project completely without going shopping. 

Since I started quilting I have saved lots of pieces of fabric and thread and, of course, batting.  I keep these things stacked up in my closet in the studio with the intention of using them for future projects.  Sometimes it happens, but mostly they just stay in the stack.

Recently I decided to sort out the batting.  Occasionally I take some of my larger quilts to a Longarm Quilter who asks her customers to purchase packaged batting to bring with the quilt.  This usually means that it is a batting that is quite a bit larger than the finished size of the quilt. There is always batting to be trimmed off later.
When I use this particular LAQ I try to always choose the same brand and type of batting with the idea that I would be piecing batting together for smaller projects.

The first thing I did was measure all the stray pieces of batting and I labeled them with the size written on a piece of paper.  A friend of mine who uses this same LAQ also gave me some of her leftovers.

When I completed the top of my last project called "Believe the Dream" I measured it and decided to make a pieced batting.

All of the batting was the same 100% cotton but some of it was white and some of it was cream.  That did not matter in my case since the quilt was scrappy. 

I simply butted them together and used a zigzag stitch to join them.  I have seen many ways to do this including layering the two pieces and cutting a serpentine line.  Since I knew I was going to use a dense quilting pattern on this project, I opted to simply stitch with a zigzag.  It holds it together well enough that there is no separation during quilting.

When the project was completed you could not tell the difference in the pieced batting and a similar project that would have been a solid piece of batting.

This particular project was a Making Do! project from start to finish.  I used up leftover blocks from another project; I used up a bolt of fabric that had been in my stash for a long time to make the backing; and, of course, I used the pieced batting.

WOW! what a great feeling.

And the quilt ain't bad either!!
                                     -sandi