I never thought I would be building a scrap hoard with all my thread scraps and felt scraps and then reusing them.

When I first started natural dyeing, I stitched the felt before dyeing but I did not cut off all the loose ends. They were left until the piece was dyed and them tidied up. At this point I started saving the excess threads and sometimes adding an extra stitch or two with the small amounts of spare thread. This was not very satisfactory as I was so very limited in the amount of thread. So I quickly started making some extra dyed threads by adding small hanks of cotton and silk threads into the dye bath with my felt pieces. I saved these yarn scraps made during this process. This was the start of my scrap hoard.

Early this year started dyeing separately all the constituent parts of my felt work. The wool fibres, the fabrics and the threads and yarns . Different dye baths with mixed fibres dye together.

This give me the opportunity to make more colourful pieces .

Now I found I was saving even the smallest thread cut off when tidying up the back of my work. To begin with I had no real rational for saving these tiny scraps. They just seemed precious. All that time harvesting , mordanting dyeing etc.

Now I know they have a use. Below are a few and it only needs a few incorporated into a piece of felt and really lifting it.

But of course it hasn’t stopped with hoarding scraps of thread.  No my hoarding habit is spreading.  I am now saving every scrap of felt that is spare and of course all the scraps of fabric.

Can I use these?

Well I am not really sure , but I am certainly not going to be throwing them out. I have made a little postcard felt picture from them .

So here is the answer to my question of why I am building an unique scrap hoard !

Every bit of my naturally dyed yarn , fibre and fabric is precious to me. They can’t be simply bought again. I hope my process are robust enough that they can be made again, but probably not identically. So every scrap is an unique,  a part of my dyeing process to be treasured and used again if at all possible.