late summer works in progress
Perhaps it’s the weather but I find myself wanting to start more and more projects each day.
Last Thursday I finally started a project I had first started planning about 20 years ago. I took Diane Gilleland’s Creative Live course, T-Shirt Quilting: Warm Up With Your Life Story.
In high school I ran varsity cross country, winter (indoor) track, and spring track for all four years. It’s not as impressive as it sounds as there was no JV team at my high school. I was slow. I am slow. I did however collect a ton of t-shirts. These shirts hold memories. I’ve not worn them for years, but I still want to follow through and make the quilt — why else have I held onto these shirts? I also have many of my music related shirts (camp, orchestra, musicals) and random shirts from college. Those shirts are the trial shirts. I test each step/skill with one of them as for some reason they don’t hold the same weighted memories.
While I was still nervous to cut into the first t-shirt, Diane was clear in her instruction and in no time I actually took scissors to the first collar. At this point that’s all I’ve done, remove collars from the shirts. Over the past week, I’ve made it through almost all of them. I’m going slow and steady for this one.
Next I’ll take off the sleeves and separate the front from the back and start thinking about actually cutting the blocks. And that’s where the brilliance of this quilt comes together. You sort into similar sized columns and work from there. You can pad if necessary, but there is no need for exactness and furthermore, there aren’t points that need to be matched. Given the quality of most of these shirts, it’s a brilliant move. If you are thinking of making a t-shirt quilt and are unsure how to start, I highly recommend Diane’s class. It’s two full days of instruction and there are bonus projects as well. Note: I am NOT affiliated with creative live. I just really enjoyed Diane’s class!
I’m starting to shift into my own autumn knitting. I’m determined to finish my Jumble Sale Kimono for the Widow Mayhew’s Daughter by Andi Smith, a cardigan I started last May with the first sleeve as my swatch! I finally finished the second sleeve and started the body. She’s designed it to be knit flat and seamed. I decided to knit the fronts and the back all together on one circ so I don’t have to worry about them not being the same size due to knitter error (they can then all be the wrong size together). Or at least I’m trying. I expect it’s going to become a tangle pretty quickly so we’ll see how I do.
I’m still spinning and I’m preparing for Spinzilla. As the event gets tangled up with Sukkot I’m not sure if I’ll actually join the Happy Fuzzy Yarn Team or spinning rogue, I’m preparing by spinning as often as I can and stocking up on fibre. Happy Fuzzy Yarn is offering discounts on her fibre (through 31 October) if you join her team! I’ll talk more about the fibres in a future post (or more likely over at little acorn creations.
The other project I’ve been working on is some test crochet for Poetry in Yarn. It’s a beautiful fingering weight shawl (there’s a scarf option as well). I like it, and so do the foster kittens. This is an easy to work pattern and great for TV knitting while the kittens are rampaging about.
The last project is that I finally printed up version 1 of my custom planner system. I didn’t do very well at my book binding attempt, it’s not difficult but I chose the wrong thread and that made it difficult to work. There was also a problem where I wasn’t paying attention and one signature got mixed into a second one. We also need to invest in a better paper cutter. I am really liking it and finding it has simplified much of my daily planning. There are many things I want to change for version 2, but this one definitely works for me for now. Once I’ve worked with it for more than a few days I’ll write up more about it.
What are you working on?