Searching Through Scrap Baskets at a Quilt Shop

My daughter Beth and I had fun this morning searching through the scrap baskets at the local quilt shop.  Beth needed some thread for her current fabric art project.  So, of course, we browsed the shop and chatted with other quilters who were out on this bitter cold, near zero day in New Hampshire.

“Not even the cold can keep quilters from haunting their favorite fabric shop,” I mused as we browsed.

Then Beth and I discovered the shop owner adding fabric pieces to the scrap basket.  These were of various sizes, colors, patterns, and textures. 

“Some quilters who came in earlier nearly cleaned me out of scraps,” she said.  “But I found some more.”

Then we nearly cleaned her out once again as we picked up these pieces, for 35 cents each, ranging in size from 12 x 12-inches to one 6 x 36-inches.  Beth and I delight in these pieces for our various projects.  If we don’t know what we’re going to use them for at present, we’ll definitely find a use in the near future…or create a project just for that color or design.

                If your local quilt or fabric shop doesn’t have a scrap basket, perhaps you can convince the owner/manager this would be a good drawing card (of course, most quilters don’t stop with simply buying scraps).  Sometimes shop owners gather a number of scrap pieces and bundle them together into a plastic bag…then sell that amount for a specific price.