- Today is all about batting scraps.
We accumulate them, we put them in bags,
and we put the bags with the bags.
And before you know it, we have an avalanche.
It makes it so much easier when they're nice and organised.
And that's what today's episode's all about.
You'll save a tonne of space, you'll be prepared for projects,
and best of all, you'll save money in the long run.
So stick with me and I'll show you how to do it.
(bright acoustic music)
Hi there, I'm Karen Brown at Just Get It Done Quilts.
I give you tips, tricks and strategies
to help you make the quilt that you want to make.
So when you're making quilts, no matter how careful you are
to use up all your fabric scraps,
you're going to end up with batting scraps.
Part of it is just the standard sizes
that batting comes in.
But you've always got to make your batting
a little bit bigger than your quilt.
So you've always got these pieces
that come off the outsides.
We're going to do something with the big pieces,
we're going to do something with the midsize pieces,
and then we're going to do something
with the little small pieces.
(bright acoustic music)
I mostly use just one type of batting.
But I get a lot of bags of batting scraps from friends
because they know I make charity quilts.
All these pieces, I am going to sort
into piles of like batting.
I want my 100% cottons together, my polyblends together,
and my poly together.
Anything of unknown origin, I put in a fourth pile
and I'll just use them for something else.
It's important to put like types of batting together
because different types of batting
shrink at different rates.
(bright acoustic music)
You can buy batting by the yard or buy a precut size.
Batting on the roll comes in three widths:
96, 108, and 120 inches.
And when we put our quilt on top, once we trim off,
we get these long pieces of scrap on the side.
So taking a pile of all one type of batting,
you sort your pieces with all the long skinny ones together.
It's amazing how fast these scraps can accumulate over time.
What we are going to do is take two pieces of equal length
and splice them together.
Then we are going to add to this piece
'til we get the size that we want.
So as usual, start with the end in mind.
What size batting are you trying to make?
Are you going to make it lap sized,
are you going to make it baby sized,
or are you going to make a twin?
I don't recommend using this method
for anything larger, just because it gets unruly.
Find the pieces with similar length.
Make sure the right sides are up.
Now how do you tell the right side?
Most cotton or polyblend cotton has been needle punched.
And that gives it a soft, smooth surface
for the top of your quilt.
So we're going to take our two pieces,
make sure that they are flat.
And when they're flat, then we are going to pull one
over top of the other just enough so that the whole piece
is covering the other piece.
What we're going to do here is called double cutting.
Double cutting is used in other trades
like wallpapering, any trade where you're wanting
two pieces of like material butting up
against one another and you want a seamless edge.
Then we are going to take our rotary cutter.
You can use your ruler for this and make it totally straight
but it doesn't have to be.
The key thing here is you want to be sure
that you're going through both layers as you cut.
Then we pull away the off cut from this side
and we pull away the off cut from the bottom.
These two pieces should line up
perfectly together and lie flat.
So before we move it from this place,
we want to mark where the edges line up.
Now we can do this with simply with a couple of pieces
of masking tape, or you can use it with a marker.
You can sew these together by hand
with a simple whip stitch, but I prefer
to do it with my sewing machine.
Now when I first started doing it, I did it with a zig zag.
But I've been testing out other stitches
on my machine lately, and I find that I like the results
the running stitch better.
The downside is it's slow.
Now thread.
Cotton is fine to use on batting that you know
that is 100% cotton.
For the polyblends and the other types,
I would use polyester thread.
And simply stitch along the seam
with this little notch on your presser foot
going down the middle.
And you're done.
Now just splice as many pieces together as you need
to get the size of batting that you need.
(bright acoustic music)
You might, as you're splicing them together,
find that you need a length on the bottom.
But you also might need to splice two lengths together.
It's all good as long as it lies flat.
(bright acoustic music)
And don't worry about small misses, it happens.
(bright acoustic music)
Okay, so what do we do with the medium pieces?
I like to keep some standard size batting pieces on hand
for projects that I do.
I regularly give pillows as hostess gifts.
They're fast, they're easy, they don't involve
the time investment of a quilt.
They're also very popular with the people
that I give them to.
I like to also have these on hand
when I want to practise free motion quilting.
Not only are they great to practise and experiment on,
they're also great to keep as reference for future projects.
And I regularly do quilt-as-you-go.
This is a double bonus, as you use up fabric scraps,
as well as your batting scraps.
Just remember to only combine blocks
which have the same batting.
I also like to make postcards.
They are fast birthday cards
or Christmas cards or thank you notes.
There's lots of other things you do.
You might make placemats or mug rugs or coasters.
Use it as a duster at the end of your mop.
There's sanitary pads.
Just do a quick search on Etsy.
There's tonnes of patterns to choose from.
Or perhaps bunting.
I didn't get it done for this Halloween.
Maybe in 2020.
There's people that use these to pad between their china
while it's in storage.
You can use it for your Christmas ornaments.
Basically anything that's breakable.
So decide on what your standard sizes are going to be.
My large pillow is 18 by 18, and I make the batting
just a little bit larger.
If you don't have a piece large enough,
just splice smaller pieces together
just like we did with our large big strips.
This is where I use up all my batting of unknown origin.
Then make yourself a handy dandy tray
to keep them all organised.
I made this one out of foam board.
And if you haven't seen my episode
on making a foam board tray,
I will put the connection up here.
(bright acoustic music)
Now, we're down to the small pieces.
You are always going to have pieces like this.
So what do you do with them?
If they're large enough, I will cut them
into 2.5 inch squares and I'll use them as dusters.
I keep some around my desk, I keep some
around my sewing table, and it just picks up
that dust that's everywhere.
And I've heard that some people use these as makeup pads.
But what I use them for the most is stuffing.
If you've seen my episode on the English
paper piece soccer ball, you know how much
of these little pieces can be used up
inside a stuffed article.
It sometimes reminds me of making pasta,
these long thin strings.
But you just go down and just make random cuts.
It doesn't need to be even, it doesn't need to be straight.
And just keep going.
It's super easy to make your own pillows
out of interfacing that you surge around the edges
and then you stuff with all your batting scraps, a win win.
If you'd like to see a tutorial on these stuffed pillows,
just mention that in the comments below.
(bright acoustic music)
Now one last note.
After you cut up your batting, your cutting board
is going to look like it's been to war with a small kitten.
So there's three steps to cleaning it up.
My first one is just to take a sharp edged something,
run over it, and try and remove
as much of the batting threads as possible.
Then as a second step, I go over it
with a lint brush and I remove more.
And then as a third step, I take this extra wide
masking tape and I run it all over the surface.
When you're sewing batting, it makes a tonne of lint
in your sewing machine, so make sure
you clean it out afterwards.
If you have any uses for batting that I haven't mentioned,
put them in the comments below and share it with everyone.
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So take care, and I'll see you next time.