25 Patchwork Tricks My Mother Used to Make a Quilt from Nothing

Americans throw away about 17 million tons of clothes and textiles a year. In Meemaw Ruby Mae's mother's house in the Kentucky mountains, not one scrap of cloth ever left the place. Every worn-out shirt, dress, flour sack and pair of overalls went into the scrap basket, and every winter that basket turned into warm, beautiful quilts. These are 25 patchwork tricks her mother used from 1946 on to make quilts from nothing but scraps, on a treadle Singer and a quilting frame hung from the kitchen ceiling. Most of them still work today, for beginners and longtime quilters alike. THE 25 PATCHWORK TRICKS 1. Sort scraps by light and dark 2. Cut the good parts out of worn clothes 3. Unpick feed sacks in one pull 4. Test every scrap for running color 5. Templates from cereal boxes and sandpaper 6. Mark with a sliver of soap 7. Mark the quarter-inch seam on the machine 8. Cut on the grain 9. Press, don't iron 10. Chain piecing 11. One plain fabric to tie the scraps together 12. Plain squares between blocks 13. Sashing strips between blocks 14. When you run out, use something close 15. Crumb piecing: turn the smallest scraps into new cloth 16. An old quilt as the batting 17. Feed sack backing 18. Tie it instead of quilting it 19. Wax the thread 20. Baptist fan quilting by the elbow 21. Bind it with the backing 22. Save the feed sack string 23. Cutter quilts from worn-out quilts 24. Sign and date the back 25. String quilts sewn on newspaper Tell me in the comments if you have a quilt your mother made from scraps, and what's in it.