While trying to clean up and organize my craft room after my paper flower adventures, I came across a large basket with saved scrap fabric, or ‘cabbage’. In my quest to make sure I have reasonable reuse habits and not lean too far into ‘hoarder’ tendencies, I decided to either do something with the scraps or throw the smaller ones out. After searching how to use scrap fabric and not loving projects with smaller scraps, I chose to create project stuffing that I can use in upcoming projects.
Materials
I have quite a few scraps saved up from various projects including (but not limited to) my jean jacket, up-cycled housecoat, and scraps of muslin from various other mockups. This pile of fabric taken from my ‘cabbage’ basket included scraps of cotton shirts, quilt batting, rayon lining, and various cotton/polyester mixes. I tried two separate methods for cutting up these scraps into small pieces.
Method 1: Rotary Cutter
This was the first method I tried. It was very simple, in that all I did was use my rotary cutter to cut roughly 1 cm strips, turn 90 degrees and cut more 1 cm strips perpendicular to the first set. I usually folded the piece of fabric over at least once before beginning to speed up the process. I continued this process until I stupidly cut my index finger with the rotary cutter 🙁 I don’t think I’ve ever been more grateful for safety features because otherwise it could have been really bad. This, of course, prompted me to take a break from this method and try another.
Method 2: Scissors
The second method was with scissors. I followed three simple steps:
- Fold up the fabric scrap several times so you can cut several layers quickly at once.
- Cut the fabric into thin ‘noodles’.
- Gather up the fabric ‘noodles’ and cut across them to your desired stuffing consistency.
Comparison
Overall, the results of the scissor method (pictured right) yielded a better consistency for stuffing, in my opinion. Another pro of this method is that you can do this anywhere, including in front of the tv, without a large cutting mat or a lot of space. However, this method was much more physically demanding in that it tired out my hands faster than using the rotary cutter. I would definitely not plan to do a large amount of scraps all at once regardless of the method you choose. In an ideal world, I would be disciplined enough to do this process every time I complete a larger project.
Final thoughts
I’m actually pretty excited to use this in my next project. While the consistency of this stuffing obviously won’t work for all projects (it doesn’t have the fluffiness or springiness of polyester fill, for example), I think this is a nice way of avoiding unnecessary waste and freeing up storage space. I hope you’ve enjoyed this suggestion of how to use scrap fabric to create project stuffing. I’ll let you know how it performs in the next post!
