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 !
