Knitting Up My Fabric Stash. . .

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has been going through their stuff in lockdown and either having a good tidy or trying to decide what to do with all the stuff!

I have a fabric stash going back thirty years when I thought hand quilting would be my main hobby. While meditative, it takes an awfully long time but that didn't stop me from amassing several boxes full of various fat quarters and yards of sale oddments.

At the time a lot of quilt shops were filled with floral country prints in pastel colours.  When I laid out all my fabric on the back lawn, I was really surprised at how much pink I had acquired; it's not a colour that I really like to wear or use for accents around the house.  Which just goes to show how your taste changes over the years.

It was while watching a quilting tutorial on how to make binding that I came up with an idea of how to finally make good use of all my fabric which has been doing nothing but sitting in boxes under the spare bed.

I started cutting them up into roughly 2 inch strips.

Then I sewed all the strips together, end to end.

I folded them over with the right sides outwards and pressed them very lightly. (By the way, I recently invested in a tiny quilter's iron and a square wool mat for pressing - best purchase ever!)

Then I wound the strips into a huge fabric ball of yarn.

And started knitting!  I am using 15mm needles and I cast on 125 stitches.  This shows it all bunched up on the circular needle and it's already the width of my landing, so when it's all spread out, it should be a really good size for a floor rug. I'm using moss/seed stitch for added texture as this will be lovely to walk on in bare feet.

It's by no means a quick process as I estimate that with the cutting, sewing, pressing and knitting, it probably takes about 2 hours to do a few rows.  But those fabric piles are shrinking and I am actually loving how all these fabrics look together.

And soon I will have some extra storage boxes. . . ahem. . .for yarn stash no doubt.