Stop and Go Quilting or "No More Bird Nests!

 I was sewing along merrily

 the other day when I had to grab my 

seam ripper to take care of a "bird nest"!

The thread either knots up or some of the 

fabric gets eaten. This happens most

often on older machines I think. 

Especially on my little featherweight,

as it doesn't have a "needle up" feature. 

Argh!  I had let myself 

run out of stop and go bits! 

If you are not familiar with these

you may know them as 

Bonnie Hunter's Leaders & Enders ,

scrap starters, sewing tag or as

 my BFE calls them, "Bunny tails!" 

They are the little pieces 

you put under when you Go to start sewing or

when you Stop!  They keep 

the trailing end of the thread from 

pulling down in to the bobbin and

 tangling into a bird's nest on your piece. 

They also save a bit of thread,

(I have lots of thread ) so I don't

worry about that too much.

My current Stop and Go project 

is more 1/2 squares.  I have 

boxes of  1/2 squares all sizes. 

I had a great time sorting and trimming

during a recent internet sewing session. 

I ended up with a nice pile of  

1/2 square triangles to be sewn together!

They get saved up in  my small plastic drawer storage and 

I use them to add size to backs or quilt tops. 

It seems I need to

 frequently modify my sizes

and having a stash of fillers is very handy. 

There is one section of flying geese too. 

There always seems to be left over bits of blocks

 that I save for using elsewhere.

I used the last bunch of 1/2 squares for the borders

of this lovely.

Prior to the 1/2 squares, I'd been using little bits for 

Stop and Goes.  I had enough last week to make up

 

the scrappy portion of these waffle blocks. 

It is a great way to use up little bits 

that I can't bear to throw away. 

I think that is another characteristic of a 

scrap quilter, saving all those little bits!

Let's keep sewing them up!

Stay safe and sew on !