Scraps away

With all of her sewing, it is little wonder that Georgia ends up with scraps of fabric. But what should she do with all of these scraps? Sometimes she turns them into quilts, sometimes into shopping bags, etc.

A new type of project came into Georgia's sights - using scraps (ok, strips) of fabric and cotton clothesline, and then making them into various things, like bins, vases, and bags. She bought some reference materials, and decided to DO something.

Georgia has some 9 x 13 inch pan carriers (like for picnics), but nothing to carry a round casserole dish. So that was what she decided to make. No specific pattern for the carrier? No problem, Georgia would just "wing it".

Georgia didn't notice that the first set of instructions used a cotton line that was heavier than what she had purchased. She attempted to follow the instructions. First she cut fabric strips, then sewed them into tubes. The clothesline was threaded into the tubes, and then was finally sewn together with a zigzag stitch.

Sewing the clothesline together proved difficult, Georgia really had to force the tubes of clothesline close enough on the sewing machine. She often missed, and had to repeatedly sew a row of clothesline to its neighbor.

Since the bottom of the carrier was fairly formed, Georgia decided to switch fabrics and methods. The second method involved wrapping fabric strips around the clothesline.

First she cut and sewed the 1 inch strips together end to end. Then Georgia started wrapping the strips around the clothesline. The instructions specified using glue at the start and from time to time to keep the strips in place. That sounded too sticky to our girl.

Instead of the glue, Georgia used large clips to hold the strips in place after winding them on the clothesline. Another difference to Georgia's method was to wind the strips on a much longer length of clothesline than the instructions specified. After all, she had a clip to hold it in place. Attaching one row of clothesline to the next one proved much easier this way.

From time to time Georgia stopped to measure the carrier against the dish. When it was deep enought, she figured out how to do handles. Georgia formed them with three rows of clothesline. She took special care to reinforce the ends of the handles so they would not separate from the body of the carrier.

Finally, a lid was in order. After starting with a circle again, Georgia kept sewing and sewing and sewing. She realized that she had better check the fit. Grumble and grumble and grumble. Even though she had added some half-rows to accomodate the handles of the dish, the lid was too round to fit the bottom of the carrier.

After ripping out three rows of sewing Georgia added more half-rows on the ends. But how was she going to do handles? She looked through her references. When she got to the point where she would make something resembling a buttonhole, Georgia tried the fit once again. That idea was not going to work, but doing a second set of handles would! Two rows of clothesline later, and the lid was finished as well.

The project required about 79 feet of clothesline for the carrier, and about 9 feet for the lid. The amount of fabric required? Completely unknown - it was from leftovers after all.