Get Creative With Selvages

Only have a few selvages? No reason to wait till you have a whole basket full to have some fun. Get started with something small like this little name tag.

This was actually an old name tag that I repurposed with selvages. I just top stiched some selvages in a chevron pattern onto the muslin base and used selvage to bind it. Use any sweet pin you might have in your jewelry box to fasten it on.

 A potholder or rug mug is a great way to get started sewing with your saved selvages.

To make this one, I began with a 4 inch red square centered on top of an 8 inch muslin square. Lay this on top of a piece of Insul-bright or quilt batting. Begin stitching down selvages on either side of the middle square, simply stitching on the bound edge and then laying the next selvage over the raw edge of the one above it. When you get the first two sides finished, rotate and do the same thing on the other two sides, which will take longer selvage strips. Since you are stitching through all of the layers, it will be quilted as you go. 

 If your selvage strips are at least 1.5 inches wide, you can also use them for the binding just as you would bind any quilt. Here's the back of my pot holder. You can see the colorful fabric as the binding. I also did a little extra quilting to hold my backing onto the pieced front before I bound it. (Add as many layers of batting as you want to pad the holder.)

 On the front, you can see that I machine stitched the selvage binding down, folding under the corners.

 Making a pin cushion is another simple selvage project that only takes a few selvages. This one was made for me by my blogging friend, Cindy of Live a Colorful Life. She pieced together selvages to create a one of a kind personal touch just for me. Isn't it wonderful! As you can see, she used piping around the edges much like you would to make a pillow.

 The sky is the limit on quilt block patterns that can be used with selvages. Just create "fabric" with the selvages and then piece your new cloth into a a quilt or smaller project like this pillow top. Here is a tutorial for making this particular X-block pillow, if you are interested.

 Create fabric with your selvages to make any zipper bag or purse. Here's one that I made using a free make-up bag tutorial by Noodlehead.

I made the back of the bag with a solid piece of fabric, but it could be made of selvages also.

Zipper bags are wonderful for storing and carrying just about anything. You can't have too many!

You will have to collect quite a few selvages to make a quilt, of course. But, once your friends start hearing that you are using selvages, they will start gifting them, I'm sure! You can find the tutorial for my selvage quilt here.Yes, I'm still working on it. (Some of you know that my hubby thought that my selvages were trash and threw them all away, so I had to start going through my stash and cutting off more! I finally can laugh about it now!)

 I'd love to make a spiderweb quilt using selvages for the strips. I better finish this one first, I guess...but just imagine the strips as selvage and you get the idea of what it would look like!

 Friday I will finish up my week of selvage posts with a super easy no-sew project along with some other very quick to sew ideas.

Have I tempted you to start collecting yet? Be careful, you might even start buying fabric just because you like it's selvage!

P.S. I'm linking up with Live A Colorful Life for Really Random Thursday. Check it out!