No Sew Autumn Wool Scrap Garland

In honour of it being Wool Week (6-12th October), the other day, I was pottering in my sewing room and started to ruminate about what I could make with some wool scraps I had.  I'd acquired them from a fabric warehouse a few years ago.  They were wool mix coat fabric samples and were being thrown in a skip, so I saved a couple of bags full, took them home with me and removed the fabric samples from the cards they were pinned to.  I then added them to my stash to be used one day, for who knows what project.  I decided that their day had come.

 

Some of them were quite small, thin pieces, in lots of different designs and colours, including plaids, herringbones, plains.  They were lovely and I couldn't bring myself to throw them away, surely there was something I could use them for.  I got to thinking that they might look nice strung from some ribbon like a kind of autumnal garland.

First, I decided to shape the pieces by cutting one end of each scrap on a diagonal, some going in one direction and some going in the opposite direction.  Then I began to pin them to some ribbon.  I wanted them to look random and not too symmetrical, but I couldn't find a way to arrange them that I liked, so I gave up and left it until another day.

A day or so later, I went back to them and decided that rather than pin and sew them to the ribbon, I would staple them on to it.  This worked quite well as it was quick and if I didn't like the position of one or other piece, I could easily remove the staple and put another in it's place.

Eventually, I got the banner completed, pinned it up on the mantle edge in the sewing room and looked at it.  It looked a bit bare.  I decided to add another layer, as I still had lots of scraps left. 

 

 

 

 

I preferred the effect of having more on the banner.  Then I decided that I didn't like the directional nature of the scraps, so I cut them all to a small point, as I felt this looked better.  I added some braid, leftover from an upholstery project, over the top to help hide the staples and it was finished.  I was quite pleased with the finished result and even more pleased that I had finally managed to use them for something.

I was left with this delicious bowl of little tiny triangles and scraps. 

Don't worry, I'm not planning to make these into anything, but they did look yummy.