Feeling Scrappy!

It's no secret.

I love remnants and scraps.  Mostly because you can get them on the cheap (I do like a bargain) but also because they make me stop and think about what I'm making.  I rummage through what I have on hand and work with it instead of just buying something new and fresh.

That's not to say that my remnants and scraps aren't "new and fresh" in terms of design and all that.  I have some really nice fabrics in my stash.  But I've yet to buy a full yard of anything (meaning have it cut for me as yardage--sometimes I get darn close to a yard in the remnants I buy).

And that's not to say I don't buy some fabric with certain projects in mind.  But that's usually just in a very generic way, like "I need flesh tones for dolls" or "I need solid colors" or "No big patterns".

SO, I bought some scrap packs form JAQS fabrics (they have great scrap packs and fat quarter de-stashes--great stuff for great prices) and finally got around to doing some things with them.

This weekend I made:

It's a small fabric bag from the free pattern at Green Bag Lady .  The pattern makes a larger bag (18 x 18 inch square of fabric for the bag) but my scrap was only about 13 inches so I just winged it.  While that made the bag not so great for grocery shopping (just too small) it was PERFECT to store all my little finished toys.  I put all the Spoonflower foods (remember those, from the cut and sew pre-print I bought a while ago?) in there along with the litter of puppies, the two kittens, Molly the octopus, Snarl the stegosaurus, George the chameleon, and Clark (super worm).  And there's still room for more stuff (guess I'd better start stitching up the rest of those foods--there are still a ton of those to finish!).

Once I got that done, I just had to see what else I could make from my scraps.

Here's some "work in progress" pics. 

I was going to try and keep it all under wraps until I was done but. . .eff that.

I'm finally making mermaids!

I got one done (you can see her taily-o in the second pic) and the second just needs assembled and she'll be done too (that's her in the top pic and just the top piece of her tail is in the second pic).

(that second pic also shows what the finished mermaids will look like--see that wee little mermaid there, too cute).

I'll give all the gorey details when I show them off but I just have to brag that I use the scraps from the bag to make the tail for the second mermaid AND I tried out a new stitch (on my machine) and some fabric markers.

Trying out new patterns and stuff is so fun.  And so is being able to make (so far) THREE things from scraps that only cost me $10-12 (I bought two packs--warm patterns and cool solids, $5-6 each--don't now remember the exact cost).