Scraps Gone Wild

OK - so I had 12 Aeropacs and 2 rather large quilts ready to take to Leadership Institute, and was still faced with a pile of scraps.

This is when my brain gets dangerous - when I get on a creative roll like this - because then I started thinking about quilting, specifically scrappy quilting, being kind of like leadership sometimes - you get lots of different fabrics/people with different looks/strengths and have to put them together into something functional - like a quilt or an organization. And many times you may have a pattern in mind, but the pattern changes depending on what you have to work with. I even asked my participants which came first - the pattern or the fabric -and which of the quilts was made first. It made for an interesting discussion.

And then you have leftovers - people who can't/don't work with the big plan, but still are useful in their own way, or that mixed in with the whole they overpower, but on their own they do better. In my metaphor filled brain -these are the 'scraps'...

So I decided to illustrate this - and make all those scraps useful. I started sewing "Perfect Pouches" and when I ran out of pieces big enough to make those, I started sewing the little scraps back together and making more pouches. Big pouches, little pouches - pouches with Handy Tabs, pouches with handles. My goal was to use up all the scraps.

(if you look closely at the pouch on the right of the top photo, the top portion is made up of a bunch of 3 1/2 x 1 1/2 scraps of the same fabric - stitched back together into a bigger panel.)

I even made 2 journal covers with Perfect Pouches on them - one for my assistant coordinator, and one for me.

I pouched until I ran out of zippers and found that I had one for every participant to take home with them.

And I still have some leftover scraps!!!

Next year our theme is sports...
Stadium blankets anyone!??!