Unneeded Items

I am sharing a project I started from the scraps of the donation quilts I’ve been working on. The fabric for the donation quilts comes from the adult bibs from the hospital’s acute care facility. The hospital’s volunteer crafter created them but didn’t need them anymore. I eventually got them to reuse as material for donation quilts to sell at the hospital’s thrift shop.

My pile of bibs in multiple stages of trimmings


For the donation quilts, I trimmed off the neck area and the finished edges to get a large area of fabric to cut my pieces. I had about 20+ bibs, which makes for much trimming waste of the bib’s neckties and finished edges. I thought I could make wrap cord bowls or trivets from the trimmings. It’s like a version of my denim seam trivet I made during the pandemic.

This is definitely a form of slow stitching.


I used the neckties (bias tape) as a cord, then wrapped and twisted the strips of fabric from the finished edges around them. I stitched around the wrapped cord to secure and connect the rows. I laid the wrapped cord on top of the previous row to build up the sides. I ended it by folding it under itself and stitching it tight so it would come apart.

Two finished pieces


There is still a bunch of trimmings left and more to make. I hope I can use all of it. Reuse, Reduce, Recycle.

Seams and Scraps

What do you make with jean seams and aloha shirt scrap? I made a trivet using hand-stitching. I also taught myself how to use a thimble. It helped a lot with all the stitching on denim.

I love the look of all the ends but decided against leaving it as is. It would probably get too dirty.


I lined the back with a large scrap from my whale project to hide the rough edges and give it a little more support. I tried out the blanket stitch technique from the Zen Stitching workshop from Mirjam Gielen .

In the end, there really isn’t a front or back. I guess whichever you prefer. This project took longer than I expected. Stitching through denim is tough. But I liked the finished product. More to come.