Gifting scraps – Part 1

In December of 2017 I was lucky enough to snag some scrap bags from my favourite RTW company Palava. If you haven’t heard of them, they make some beautiful women’s and children’s clothes and have committed to a zero waste policy – here is a blog post outlining the company’s sustainable ethos. Every year they sell some fabric scraps for a good cause and this year I was quick enough to grab some of these for myself!

The fabrics are beautiful, I already have an addiction to the Palava dresses and skirts (ahem 14 at last count) but it felt really special to get hold of some of the fabrics for me to sew up myself! As it was my mum’s birthday at the end of January I knew I wanted to make her some gifts using these special fabrics but having some small pieces to work with I had to get my thinking cap on!

First up was the Tailor’s Ham from Jennifer Lauren Handmade, this is a free pattern on her website accompanied by a tutorial of how to put it together on the blog. I put this on my #2018makenine list as I wanted to include more scrap-busting patterns and boy that it is! It took four relatively small pieces of fabric to make each one, two lining pieces which I cut from some of my son’s old muslins, a cotton topper and something grippy for the bottom – I chose fleece. These pieces were small and I cut them from scraps but the best bit was – I stuffed them with scraps too! I had been saving all my overlocker tails and tiny scraps to use as stuffing for something and this was the perfect project. I made one for myself first (the mustard and navy one) to have a little practise, though I really didn’t need to as it was very simple to make. When I was happy with my first attempt, I moved onto the really special fabric – there was only a couple of small pieces of the Hungarian Flowers print and I knew I wanted to use it on something for mum.

Sewing these Tailor’s Hams is ridiculously straightforward, the real trick to making them successfully is stuffing the hell out of them! I stuffed, stuffed and stuffed some more, I had to raid my scrap bags more than once and am amazed how much it took to fill one of these! My only tip is, I found the smaller the scraps the better, I used the overlocker offcuts, small scraps to fill mums and it definitely packed in better and gave a smoother finish than mine which had to use slightly larger scraps after I ran out of really small ones. If you have ever fancied owning a tailor’s ham I definitely recommend  making your own – SUCH a great scrap buster project!

Have you got any great scrap-busting recommendations? I’d love to hear them! I also made mum something else for her birthday so there will be a part 2 of this post very soon!