Three Rugs and a Pile of Scraps

 Since I did so much good work finishing quilts last week I thought I would spend this weekend getting my sewing room squared away and setting up some projects for April. (including a bonus project using the supplies provided in my Island Batik Ambassador box in January!)  There was a young lady at the quilt shop who was interested in some of my selvages plus yellow and orange scraps for a project so I thought I would sort some stuff out to pass on to her.  While I had the selvages dumped out on the cutting table I pulled out a few and made a couple of mug rugs.  Then I sewed a bunch of the selvages end to end with the plan of eventually making a knitted rug with them.  When I got bored with that I put them away and pulled out my bin of binding ends to sew together to add to my crocheted rug.  (See my thought flow here?) I think it's been a couple of years since I worked on this project!

After I got all of these sewn together I rolled  them into a ball - it's a good size one!

Then I got out the rug to see how big it really is - not quite as big as I was thinking it was.  Still a lot of work to do on this one!

It's kind of lopsided looking, but I'm hoping it'll even out eventually.  Or I hope it will block out...we'll see!  Might be a few more years before I get it big enough!  Ok, while I'm in the rug mode, maybe it would be fun to get that Jelly Roll rug out of Island Batik going!  This collection will make a wonderful bedside rug for my bedroom - Mountain Gems.  So pretty!

I sewed all the strips together just as they came from the package.  I've been saving the rolls of Hobbs fusible batting strips from the Island Batik boxes and this is the time for them to become a project!  The batting was super easy to fuse to the strips - I was curious if there was fusible on both sides.  There is, but I didn't have any problem with it, it would lightly stick to my ironing board, but pulled right up and didn't leave any residue.  It made an impressive pile when I was finished!

For the next step I had to search my sewing room a bit to find the gadget I purchased to make the sewing of the strips easier.  I highly recommend acquiring a Jerry's Jellyroll Jig for sewing the rope for the rug!  This made the job so much easier - that and the fact that the batting was fused to the strips so everything was all in place.  The sewing went so quickly!

After sewing, I started rolling all this up into a ball for sewing later.  The ball ends up being the size of a soccer ball - I am planning on sewing the rug later this month, but it's nice to have my rope ready for when I want to put itogether so I can just concentrate on sewing the rug.

I had another project I wanted to pull fabric for, so I did a big dive into my Island Batk stash looking for colors to use.  Well, one thing led to another and I ended up making a big mess and lots of piles of fabric.  I found the fabrics I wanted, but then I had to deal with the aftermath!  I decided it was time to reduce some of the excess, so set myself some limits on what I wanted to go back into the closet and made a plan for using some of the remaining fabric.

I'm challenging myself to make something out of this pile of green scraps.  I have an idea, so you'll see more about that in a few days!  After this my sewing area was a total disaster, so seeing that Kim (Persimon Dreams) and Kim (Go-Go Kim) are doing a Craft Room Overhaul was pretty good timing!  I do have a busy month ahead, but I really want to make some progress in getting my room organized, so it's as good a time as any to get started, and maybe inspired as well!

I'll get some pictures and write up a post tomorrow about the current state of my sewing room.  It's been worse, but it certainly could be better!  Hopefully after this it will be much better!