Barbara Schutzgruber – Storyteller & Weaver

I’ve been working with cloth and fiber since I was a kid. Anyone who works with fabric, yarns and fiber knows you end up with bits and pieces of leftover scraps. I struggle with throwing away those bits and pieces because my fiber teachers and role models lived through the Great Depression and/or rationing in WWII. “Waste not…want not,” was the mantra. “You can’t throw out a perfectly good piece of cloth. Save it….you’ll use it for some project in the future.” This became even more ingrained once I started weaving and felting my own cloth. After all the money, time, energy and effort (even blood, sweat & tears at times) I was not about to throw out any bit of cloth or loom waste warp yarn .

As the years have gone by, not only do I have a serious stash of yarns and felting fibers

but my pile of scraps has grown too with odds & ends of yarns, oddly cut handwoven fabric from making fitted garments, plus all the muslin test garments and scraps.

The Ann Arbor Fiberarts Guild kicked off the new year with a workshop by Thom Atkins called ‘Scrappy Improvisations’. Thom’s an amazing quilter who plays with fabric scraps to test new ideas and create new fabric. 

“Drawing from his unique mix of whimsical imagery, abundant textures, and blended techniques, Thom will inspire your improvisational spirit and unlock your sense of play as you turn leftover fabrics into a cohesive new piece. Gather all the odd fabric scraps from your stash to give them new life as an abstract art quilt composition. Finally, a way to put all those little bits to good use!”

Handwoven fabric is not as easy to save small bits so I don’t have many but I have LOTS of felt scraps! I signed up for the workshop to push the parameters of my creativity and try some new ways to use my scraps. There were 13 in the workshop. Most used commercial sewing/quilting fabric and 3 of us used felt, handwoven fabric, and velvet.

Using glue and pins to hold things in place we laid out our bits and pieces which would eventually be sewn into position.

My scraps ranged from light weight/soft prefelts to pieces that were fully felted to fabric on one side. I used commercial prefelt as base hoping it would be able to grip onto the pieces that were well felted already.

Using glue to tack pieces in place was interesting but did not work that well with felt so I needle felted pieces to hold them in place….stabbing myself in the process. (Yup…me and sharp implements…not a good combination so needless to say I don’t do much needle felting.)

One of the reasons I enjoy workshops is seeing what others are doing. I always come aways with new insights when it comes to design.

Once I had my felt piece holding together enough to take it home I used some scraps Thom brought to practice the glueing technique putting pieces together to make a solid fabric square. I can continue to add pieces to it and then the edges will be stitched down and will then be used as a base fabric for a future project.

Because I wasn’t sure all the pieces would felt together, once I got home I used thread and yarn to tack the heavier felt scraps to the prefelt backing, then wetted it down and began to roll. My ‘Scrappy’ design shrank about 25% and each of the ‘already felted’ scraps were able to lock into the pre-felt backing.

I will definitely continue to play with using scraps.
Time to access my inner ‘Picasso’.