Don't throw away those scraps!

I always keep my scraps of fabric. To me scraps of fabric means 5" or larger. I can always find a use for them eventually. But what about batting scraps? I always end up with odd size pieces after a quilt & a lot of times I'll throw them away thinking they're too small to even get a playmat or crib quilt out of it. Well not anymore! I'm still fairly new to quilting (only been doing this for just over a year) and I'm what I would say self taught or internet taught (haha!) so maybe a technique like this has already been done, however I'm pretty proud of myself for being so thrifty! I definitely can't take credit for this idea as I know it's been done before.

A few weeks back at our last Dallas Modern Quilt Guild meeting. The shop owner showed us a new product they had. She called it a fusible tape to help fuse batting together so you wouldn't have to overlap your batting or sew it or have any lumps & bumps in your quilt. I thought it was a great idea, but 10 yards of this fusible tape for $8-10 doesn't go very far.

SO instead I figured out my own :) I went to Joann's & bought the Pellon Ek 130 Easy Knit which is a fusible knit interfacing & underlining very light weight fabric. You can find on the rack with the wonder under & pellon fusible fabrics. So I bought a yard of it for $3.69 (I thought it would be silly to use a 40% off coupon on that, but you could to make it even cheaper!) so here's my math, which I don't trust....If I cut the yard of the Pellon easy knit into 2" thick strips, then I will have 18 cuts. The fusible fabric was 45" wide so X 18 cuts gets you 22.5 yards. SO I was pretty proud of myself for getting 22.5 yards for $3.69 instead of jumping the gun and buying the 10 yards of fusible tape for $10!! I felt pretty thrifty :)

So here is a quick tutorial on how to use your *thrifty* fusible tape.

1. lay out your fusible fabric & cut into 2" strips.

I started off with a few different size pieces- 1 piece measured about 15" wide by 65" long. The 2nd one measured 12" wide by 82" long.

2. I cut them into 3 different pieces. 2 measured 12" by 40" & the 3rd piece measured 15" by 40". I had 1 smaller piece left over perfect size for a doll quilt. I lined up 2 of the pieces on my ironing board. Don't overlap, but line them up very closely.

3. Lay your fusible fabric rough side down & smooth out with your hands.

4. Get a cloth to lay overtop & set a hot steamy iron on top to fuse the fabric down to the batting. It should only take a few seconds since the fabric is so light weight.

5. Repeat the fusing for any additional panels you have.

So I ended up with the perfect size batting panel for a crib quilt or play mat- about 40" X 40" !! And it came out of something I normally wouldn't keep :) So glad I did!