Twilight Fabric Remnants
I really don't throw any fabric away, no matter how small the pieces. I sort them according to size and store them in boxes and bottles. They are sorted according to color families and this month I am working with very small twilight colored fabric scraps which I store in upcycled plastic Atlantic salt bottles.
I also have many beads collected over the years from broken jewelry pieces and I use them to embellish slow stitched pieces. They are also stored in plastic bottles.
I have been doing lots of slow stitching over the last few months and the pieces were created intuitively with no pattern or plan or even idea of what the finished product would look like.
I have been thinking about creating a series of slow stitched small fashion accessories for a while and came up with a list of items to create. The series is planned, no pattern though, and I call it meditative slow stitching.
Twilight Fabric Remants
I have a lot of twilight colored fabric remnants left over from the skyline of the Wave Sunset piece that I sewed a few weeks ago and I really like the color mix so I decided to use the remnants in the twilight colors to create this series.
The first thing that I did was to create fabric from these scraps and it came with me on the train in a travel pack.
A plastic bottle, beads, spools of thread, sewing needles, a magnet and a small pair of scissors.
I worked on the bead embellished fabric, as the countryside flew past on my way to tel Aviv on the train.
My first thought was to use the embellished fabric to create a pendant, but it spoke to me and asked to be a fabric cuff.
This particular series has been growing from remnants of twilight fabrics left over from my wave pieces. I’ve got strips and scraps with enough color, mood, and texture in them to carry the whole series. A cuff, a pendant, a pouch, earrings, maybe more. All from leftovers.
There’s something very satisfying about that. You really don’t have to buy new fabric to make beautiful accessories. Sometimes the most interesting pieces come from what’s already sitting in a basket, waiting to be recreated into something else.
The cuff that began as a pendant
The second piece in this series began with a simple idea. I wanted a pendant, something small and wearable, something embellished with beads, stitches, and layers of twilight-colored fabric.
I started by building a little stitched surface. Bit by bit, the scraps became a new fabric of their own. I added beads, letting them settle into the stitched areas like tiny stars caught in cloth. I didn’t want it to look too perfect. I wanted the beads to feel scattered on the surface, as though they had landed there naturally.
That’s when I started thinking about a cuff.
I sewed the bead embellished piece onto a cuff base, then I added a button closure. I love a button on a fabric cuff , actually I love a button anywhere and everywhere, I just love buttons! They are both useful and decorative.
Twilight fabric remnants still have so much to say
The fabrics I’m using for this series are remnants from my wave pieces. I think that’s why I don’t see them as leftovers.
A leftover sounds like something extra, something after the real work is done. But remnants can be rich and colorful and have so many possibilities.
A small accessory doesn’t need a lot of fabric.
I know saving scraps can get out of hand. One day you’re tucking away a few pretty bits, and the next day you’ve got containers full of pieces too small for most plans but too interesting to throw away. Still, I’ve learned that the smallest pieces often bring the most surprise.
A strip can become a border.
A triangle can become a focal point.
A frayed edge can become texture.
Those small pieces of bright green can brighten up the entire twilight piece.
Making fabric from fabric never really ends
I’ve been thinking a lot about the phrase “creating fabric.” At first it sounds like something that happens before sewing. Fabric comes first, then the project.
But with slow stitching, that order changes.
I start with fabric, yes. Then I cut it, layer it, stitch it, bead it, patch it, and join it to other fabric. At some point, I’m not just using fabric anymore. I’m making a new piece of fabric.
Then that new fabric becomes part of something else. A cuff, a pendant, a pouch or even a pair of earrings. And the little pieces trimmed from those might become another stitched surface later.
It really is a never-ending cycle of creating never-ending fabrics.
There’s a kind of freedom in knowing I don’t need a clean beginning every time. I don’t need to go shopping for that perfect piece of fabric before I can start. I can begin with what I have on hand in the studio, and I can choose a handful of scraps and know that something will come together if I begin working with them.
Some days I only add a few stitches.
Some days I only work on sorting beads and then using them for embellishing. Sometimes just sorting through the colors can take a full day until I find the beads that I want to use.
Some days I rearrange and cut the fabric pieces more than I sew.
There’s also less pressure when I’m working with remnants. That is not something new for me, I have been working with fabric remnants for years already and its kind of like creating gold from straw like Rupelstiltskin, the fabric supply is neverending when using scraps, there are always more scraps.
The fun part of meditative stitching with scraps is that it lets me try odd pairings. It lets me stitch across seams and leave raw edges visible, it also lets me add beads in uneven clusters and use my crystal and plastic beads together.
And if something doesn’t work? I can cut it again and resew and rework it. I can always add another layer, make it smaller or even stranger. Sew on a button closure and call it a cuff.
The series is becoming a number of pieces
I’ve also created a piece of fabric for a slow stitched pouch. That will be a challenge for me, to sew a pouch by hand and not use the sewing machine.
And then there are the earrings. I love the thought that the tiniest leftover pieces from the series might become earrings. Earrings only need very little fabric, but they can be stunning.
I am really enjoying making a family of pieces from the same twilight fabric scraps. They don’t have to match exactly. In fact, I’d rather they didn’t. I want them to feel related, it should look obvious that they came from the same color family, but not like they were copied from one pattern.
One set of remnants can become many kinds of fashion accessories, each with its own purpose and personality. The material connects them, but the design of each piece is different.
I am inviting you to subscribe and join me as I create the pieces in this series in the Meditative Slow Stitch Fashion collection on Patreon here
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