More information for Episode 007 "In Which We Get Scrappy"

First, as a sidebar note: In doing research for this episode, I ran across a potential use for the practice machine quilting sandwiches I referred to in episode 2. There was a tip from a quilter on about.com about donating them to an animal shelter to use as cage liners. Obviously, if you had a practice sandwich with the types of errors that lead to a lot of loose threads sticking up—which, admittedly, many of mine had—that probably wouldn’t work since the animal could hurt themselves with access to thread like that. But tight stitches probably wouldn’t be a problem. It’s worth calling your local animal shelter to ask! They may have cage size requirements that you could then use when you’re putting together your next set of practice sandwiches.


In regards to listener Bonnie’s question about EQ: check out EQ’s website at http://www.electricquilt.com/. You can also purchase EQ books either from Electric Quilt or from Amazon. The teacher of the Quilt University classes I’m taking, Fran Gonzalez, has written EQ6 Simplified, which is supposed to be an excellent tutorial-format book. I don’t own it, but will most likely end up adding it to my library before long. Hopefully she’ll do one for EQ7 that will be available soon as well. (Fran, if you’re reading…?)

Resources I used in my research for Episode 007 on scraps:

• History of quilts: http://www.reddawn.net/quilt/timeline.htm --also includes some great quilty time-waster games!

• Bonnie Hunter's Scrapusers sytem: http://www.quiltville.com/scrapusersystem.shtml
• Scrap-Therapy at http://www.scrap-therapy.com/. They run classes at local quilt shops—if you haven’t had one near you, perhaps you want to ask your LQS owner to consider doing one. The site includes a list of quilt shops organized by state who offer the classes.

• http://www.about.com/ (search for “scrap quilts” or “scrap quilting”)

• http://rachelcox.blogspot.com/2009/02/quilting-organize-your-fabric-scraps.html (Rachel Cox's blog is fun to read; this link is directly to an entry about organizing scraps)

• eHow.com—several articles on using fabric scraps--just search "scrap fabric" or something similar.

• http://www.quilt.com/FAQS/FabricStorageFAQ.html (Sort of an old school web page, but useful info.)

• Lily’s “Block a Day” blog had a nice entry about little bags she's made that struck me as a great way to use up scraps. She doesn’t print a pattern—but the bags look simple enough that even I could figure out how to make one. I really enjoy her blog, btw--I'd encourage you to follow it!

By the way, I just got my new bendie light for my sewing machine--I'm jazzed!