Treasure from Trash

As I scrolled through Instagram on my phone while I had breakfast (we all do that, right?) I saw that @berry_birdy had put out a fun new challenge. Each May, Lesley hosts the Micro Mini Stitch Along #microminisal where we get to play and create little quilts, no bigger than 8" square.

The challenge set yesterday was called "Treasure from Trash". We were to use only scraps that were in our bin. Fun!

As my sewing room bin was emptied the day before for bin night, I had quite limited scraps available to play with. I only had little bits and pieces that I'd trimmed when preparing rainbow applique blocks (you can see these in my previous post).

With a small piece of batting from a previous project, I started out by creating a background. I placed pieces down to cover the batting and sewed some very "rustic" lines to hold everything in place.

Last week, I watched some of the Making Zen video classes and one class was by @southerngals_designs. In the class, Tiffany showed us how she uses the teeniest pieces of fabric, glue and thread to create an eye. She then uses these little eye panels on other projects.

I set out by cutting the white piece and blue pieces of fabric to make the basic eyeball shape. The upper and lower eyelids were then built up using teeny scraps, held down with just a regular school glue stick.

Once I was happy with the layout, I roughly went over the eyelids and sewed the pieces in place.

Now for the fun bit, adding hand stitches. Rather than cut thread to add some little decorative stitches, I used to use embroidery floss regularly and would keep the spare threads which I'd split from the floss, in a little pocket in the floss tub. These were great for this project. I had lots of colours available to use and I had two strands of black. Perfect!

I added straight stitches, little crosses and outlined the white of the eyeball in black, which kinda looks like eyeliner.

I was thinking of adding eyelashes, but figured I should stop before I got tooooo carried away.

I added a small piece of fabric to the back (from my scrap bags) of the piece and sewed right around the edge (rectangle). Pinking shears finished it off.

The piece measure approximately 2.5" x 5.5" and I had a lot of fun making it. I'll probably end up using it as a bookmark.

This image shows the scraps that I had left over after this exercise. They're now back in the bin... unless another trash challenge is set.

If you're interested in the Micro Mini Stitch Along and checking what everyone is making with their trash treasures, you can find it on Instagram by searching the hashtag #microminisal.