Snippet Catchers

Sometimes my product ideas come from familiar surroundings…like my best friend’s house. A couple of years ago, while sewing together with my BFF Sam, in her sewing/art studio in her incredible Victorian farm house in Upstate NY, I saw a lovely birds nest similar to this one.Intrigued to see all the little pieces of fabric and fiber interwoven with the twigs, I asked where it had come from. Sam explained to me that every spring, when she sees the birds out in her yard beginning to gather items for nest building, she tosses her fabric, threads and yarn bits out in the garden for the birds. She saves up her fiber snippets all year long in little paper bags near her sewing machine and on her cutting table. She had found the nest later in the year out in her barn.

Thinking how clever of her, I thought to myself wouldn’t it be nice if she had something beautiful besides the little paper bags for the snippets she was saving? I also wondered if other sewists did the same thing and what the bird world thought of this practice. Was it okay for the birds?

After doing a bunch of research, I discovered that, there were plenty of others like Sam out there saving up their fibers to share with the birds. I also verified that the Humane Society and Cornell School of Ornathology ok’d the practice. Thus the Snippet Catchers were born.

If you look carefully, we’ve even put a little tag in the shape of a bird on the set of two Snippet Catchers encouraging the practice of stashing and sharing scraps of fiber bits with birds.

I can’t wait to visit my friend Sam and give her a set of our new Snippet Catchers, inspired long ago by that lovely birds nest I saw in her studio.