• Who is the quilt, garment, or fashion accessory for?
  • Is it a gift for someone special or for yourself?
• What is the theme of the quilt, garment, or fashion accessory?
  • Determining a theme, an idea that the project follows, makes it much easier to choose fabrics and embellishments
  • Are you expressing an idea, an emotion, or just enjoying the colors and textures of your project?
• Where is the quilt going to hang? What colors and accessories are in the room?
  • If you're making a garment or fashion accessory, what outfits will you wear it with?

Fabric Choice:

• Look through your fabric stash and sort into "use/don't use" piles
• Think about fabric placement:
  • colors
  • pattern vs. solid
• Washability: "Dry clean only" may limit the use of some fabrics in a garment or fashion accessory
• Because your scraps are small, and you’ll be sewing them onto a ground fabric, fabric grain and weight aren’t as important as they are in a traditional pieced quilt or a garment
• I try to choose lightweight fabrics (cotton, cotton/polyester blends, silk, rayon, etc.) that will turn under easily; I have used corduroy though, and it’s not difficult to work with

Planning

• I like to plan "on the fly" and let the project come together as I sew fabrics down on the ground fabric
• You may be more comfortable with a well-defined starting point you can build your quilt around:
  -a focus fabric (a fabric that will dominate; choose other fabrics to coordinate/contrast with it)
  -a photograph or magazine picture
  -sketching out an idea
  -using a cherished button or piece of lace to build the project around

Fabric Preparation:

• Iron the ground fabric and the scraps, so they’ll lay flat for sewing; you can do that before starting, or one piece at a time as you sew
• Washing new fabrics removes the sizing and assures washability, but no one's going to know if you don't

Sewing the scraps to the ground:

• Lay the ground fabric out flat and pin your first two scraps to it
• Depending on the size of the scrap, you can probably use only 4-6 pins, maybe less
• The first scrap is flat; the second scrap will have an edge turned under where you lay it on top of the first scrap
• I pin the turned under edge at least at each end of the scrap, and sometimes use 1-2 pins in between the end pins
• Now sew the second scrap down using invisible stitches
• Continue laying down scraps, pinning, and sewing until you’re satisfied with the coverage of the ground
• If you choose to, you can introduce texture while you sew down your scraps
  • Gather or scrunch up the scrap and sew in these “wrinkles”
  • After you’ve finished sewing down all the scraps, you can go back and make a small slit behind the textured scrap and lightly pad it with quilt batting or a little stuffing
  • After putting the padding in, close the opening in the back with a few stitches
• You may wish to pin most or all of your fabrics down before sewing so you can trim excess fabric