Those bits and pieces of thread and yarn from sewing/knitting/what-have-you projects (what are they called – crumbs? snippets? salvages? – there is a name but be darned if I can recall it!?) get saved in a jar on a kitchen shelf with other raw ingredients because I like the look of them and they remind me of the items made with them.
(Why in the kitchen? Well, I sew in the kitchen, and the living room and the small room that catches the afternoon sun: there are five sewing
machines set up.)
The jar got too full to put anything else in without terrible crowding.I pulled out a handful and piled them on a piece of canvas-weight linen letting the hands and the fibres dictate the arrangement of colour and texture.
Then I sewed randomly around it with only enough stitching to secure the lengths but not flatten completely.
(I experimented with lowering the feed dogs and taking off the pressure foot – boy, was that ever
interesting, sewing with only the needle – but then I
found that, if I sewed slowly and encouraged the 'crumbs' to go under the pressure foot, I could get the result I wanted.
(This post led me to try sewing without the pressure foot and lowered feed dogs and resulted in "drawing with thread". That was quite the experience!)
This is the item, now a pendant or a mosaic medallion or a pretty thing to hang around your neck.
Here is a close-up. I think happenstance came up with a very nice arrangement. What amazes and amuses me is that there are a couple of 'crumbs' in there that I don't recognize at all! There is banana leaf yarn and handspun rescues and rope.
This is what the back looks like – the ends will get knotted and trimmed – and the resulting threads stuffed put neatly into the jar on the shelf.
I couldn't resist starting another one. This one has plarn (plastic yarn) in it from an experiment cutting one continuous strip from a plastic bag and some elastic pieces from the cowl knit from elastic bands and a strip of knitting that looks as if it was cut for some reason – ?. I trimmed off the excess backing and simply pin it (love those safety pins!) to a garment or use it as a closure on two overlapping pieces of fabric.
I may try adding bits of actual material from clothing articles in the next one.