This is a bin of leftover quilt batting.  Strips and chunks of batting from years of quilt-making have been saved.  Why, you ask?  Because it is easy to zigzag them together to create bigger pieces, “new” batting to use in new quilts.

Last May at the lake was very cold and cloudy, the kind of weather that makes me want to hole up inside and sew. Which I did. The summer food was prepared and frozen, stacked in the freezer for the upcoming days of family dinners. So I bought “travel the world” and “explore the wilderness” themed fabrics for son Will’s future second grade class.

That project finished, I had the bright idea to create little quilts for story time using the leftover fabrics. Little quilts are great fun to make, so I made seven of them before the weather changed, the sun came out and my Texans arrived.

Now that I’m home it is time to quilt them. I dragged out several bins of batting and began to measure the strips.

Clearly this was not going to be the easy project I’d envisioned.

Here is the fabric I bought for the 2nd grade projects:

These pictures are out of order. I’m sure there is a way to fix that, but I haven’t figured it out yet. I’ve been working on the blog post for three days and had to stop to install and run new software to speed up and clean up my computer–and it didn’t work.

So…zigzagging batting strips turned out to be a bit of a challenge. Maybe even a nightmare. I gave up and ordered a king-size batting on Amazon, which I will cut up into four pieces for the four remaining quilts. I have shoved 2/3 of my old batting scraps into a garbage bag and have kept a bin of the larger ones for a time when I might possibly be able to use them.

The floor of my office is now empty and I am much happier.

As for my computer, I am going to take it to the experts this week. It’s barely usable and I waste a lot of time sitting here waiting for it to move between websites and programs and photos.

I bet you all know what I mean.

Tomorrow I will return to piecing chunks of fabric together to make quilt backings.

Being frugal is a lot of work.