More quilter's estate stuff = more dog beds

But first, penguin eyes! I'm working on 20 penguin faces and finished 40 penguin eyeballs. I'm having some serious issues with my seam allowance on these tiny pieces. If I made this quilt again I'd create foundation papers to create the small eye and beak pieces. For me, that would be easier. The next step is to make beaks.

Quilter's stuff

Back in the 90's the quilt fabric manufacturers really went wild creating beautiful fabrics for us and we dutifully bought all of it along with tools, notions and batting. We've created amazing collections of supplies and not it seems that we are starting to age out of the hobby and more and more of those collections are looking for new homes. I would be shocked if there's any quilt group out there that hasn't been gifted another quilter's stash. It's fun to go through other another quilter's stash looking for treasures. 

A member of our group got a call last week of another quilter's estate that needed clearing. She wasn't a member of our group but as I went through some of the stuff I realized that she had been a Facebook follower of mine and we had chatted about her custom t-shirt and memory quilt business. Sadly she died less than a year after retiring. Her executor found us through a friend. She was clearly so grateful that we were able to take everything. 

I brought home the batting to go through to see what we could use for veterans quilts and we have another quilter who will piece batting for the dozens of charity baby quilts that she makes. I also brought home the HST quilt that she was working on. Mom will finish that, maybe for 2 veterans quilts, maybe for something else. This lade lived in a 1 bedroom apartment and had this much batting! You can imagine how much fabric was there.

She saved EVERY tiny piece of batting. If you have scraps like this and haven't used them yet, please give yourself permission to throw them out. They are just a burden to you because every time you see them you think "I should do something with that". But if you haven't yet, you probably won't. But since I make dog beds from my own batting scraps I just added these to my bed bin.

It didn't take me long to sort through everything. The bin on the left will go to Karen for her baby quilts. The bag in the middle is pet bed stuffing and the stack on the right will be for 11 veterans quilts.

Pet Beds

I immediately chopped up the pet bed bits and decided not to let this accumulate anymore. 

It took less than 2 hours to make these 4 pet beds. All those fabrics are decorator fabrics that came from other quilter/sewist stashes and it was all free to me. The size of the bed is based on the optimal size I can cut the fabric. I do try to make only large beds because I think rescue organizations probably gets mostly large dogs. Also large beds are faster to make! 

I even use scrap thread and finished off this cone of King Tut thread. I'm working my way through a spool of heavy cotton purple thread now. 
The dogs don't care if the thread doesn't match.

All of this has made me, once again, start looking around all my creative spaces to think about moving out things that I'm not likely to use again. The first place I'm going is into my fiber art supplies. I have silk fibers and other things that I'm not likely to use. I did dabble in fiber art a few years ago and I use some small quantities of things in my postcards but I'm not likely to do much fiber art in the future simply because I'm so allergic to the adhesives and paints. 
​Maybe it's time to empty a cabinet or two.

Because I just got all of my new Paula Nadelstern fabrics!

Maybe I need a new rule. Everything coming in has to be balanced with things going out. The math lover in me would say:
Inputs <= Outputs