What do you do with leftover binding?

I've been collecting my leftover binding for several years, simply just winding it in a honey bun fashion and storing it in my grandmother's glass cake plate on my great aunt's hutch near my sewing area.

It's been one of those things...ya'know, where you don't really know what you're going to do with, but just know that it's wasteful to discard that much fabric.

Now as a disclaimer, this isn't all my leftover binding. If the binding was cut 2.5 inches it gets unpressed and goes back into my 2.5 drawer for scrap quilts. But sometimes I cut binding at other widths and this is what has been collected.

Oh I've dug into it every now and then - on occasion I've pulled out a bit to demonstrate how I do a mitered binding - several customers are new quilters and don't know how to do this, so I take a little time and show them. But other than that, it's pretty much been rolled into this decoration. And I've enjoyed looking at it quite frankly.

Enter in my addiction to fabric baskets. Hum...

So each evening this past week I've taken a little while and sat at the domestic sewing machine to prepare my cording for a new fabric basket. If any of you are new to this blog you'll have to do a search on all my posts on fabric baskets, I'm on my 5th one now (plus one bath mat) all having been inspired by Mrs. King's Gallery Baskets DVD...

Here's one of the honey buns from my cake plate all ready to become my newest creation.



Today was the day. After a wonderful service at church this morning and a side trip to JoAnn's Fabrics to pick up some trim for future Christmas baskets I came home to play.



As yo can see, this became a good size round basket. I unrolled the binding as they came and totally ignored any color theories.... I just 'made do' with what I had and I like the way it ended up.


The roll of binding next to it will be the next project, a lid to go on this basket. I think I have enough binding leftovers to make the lid, I hope so, otherwise I'm going to have to stop and bind a new quilt to be able to finish this project! Very eager to try my hand at making a lid. Rosanne's instructions on the DVD are so clear that I'm sure I won't have a problem. Gosh, weekends don't roll around enough sometimes do they?

Oh, one more thing....last weekend I made a Bible cover to take to the Women's Conference at my church. I started a matching tote but ran out of time. I decided to work on that last night....Pixxie and I vote for ENDLESS SUMMER! We love the bright colors and really don't want to give them up for fall - around here it's not as colorful as when we lived in the mountains, so I vote to keep the tropical prints year round!



Hope you are enjoying your Labor Day Weekend, whether you labor for yourself or someone else, chose JOY!