recycled materials – Page 4

Friday Finish: Sewing

Posted on March 18, 2022March 18, 2022 by Laura Kate

While tidying my workspace last week, I noticed all the shirt pieces I had left over from making the Howard Wabi-Sabi quilt. Since I had used only the backs, the leftovers included sleeves, fronts and collars. It occurred to me that there is a potential fiber object buried inside each one of them.

Naturally, I turned to U-Tube, to see what others have made from discarded men’s shirts. Not surprisingly, there were many, many projects. I wanted to make an apron, but I also spotted a cute little girl’s dress.

That idea I will save for another day. For today I am focusing on this dark navy all cotton shirt front.

I also happened to have a whole spool of 1-inch white twill tape which will work very well for the neck strap and the ties.

First I removed the breast pocket. This will be jazzed up a bit to add some fun color to my apron. Since the shirt fabric featured a little star motif, (okay, it’s really a snowflake, but go with me on this one) I decided to make a sun using yellow fabric and fusible interfacing. In fact, I happened to have saved some suitable yellow fabric that already had fusing attached to its back. I cut this into the shape of a corona and fused it to the pocket.

Next I traced a circle onto white printed fabric, pressed fusing to its back, cut out the circle and pressed it over the yellow corona.

Getting back to the shirt, I trimmed the upper edge into the shape of an apron front and sewed the button opening shut. Next, I sewed a piece of the twill tape to the neck edge and folded it over the raw edge, This made for a sturdy facing. With the rest of the twill tape, I found its center, measured down each leg to reserve a big enough neck loop and marked where to start sewing the side edges. These were sewed down in the same manner as the neck facing.

After zig-zag stitching the apron string ends, I re-attached the pocket, and was done!

**POOR QUALITY LIGHT ON THIS PHOTO – SORRY**

The apron fits me just fine, but it will work also on shorter persons.

This fun project cost me a few dollars and only an hour of time. With several more cut-up shirts hanging around, I can easily spend a little more time and a few more dollars to make unique, personalized gifts for the artists and cooks in my life.

collage, painting

Fun Fabric Object Friday

Posted on March 4, 2022 by Laura Kate

The email came in with the following request from my sister-in-law:

“Our dear niece is getting married this May. The couple had said “no gifts,” but we want to make them a joint patchwork bedspread from all of the family. Would you be willing to make and send a six by six block that will be incorporated into this gift?“

Would I? Without a doubt. But I needed more information to make it personal. I asked, “What are the hobbies and interests of the happy couple?” When I heard the answer (the bride loves ballet and the groom is fond of dogs, especially his collie, Harvey,) an image came to mind immediately:

Dog in tutu !!

My sister-in-law had sent a photo with the fabric palette. (See above.) All I needed was some similar fabrics and a reference image.

The first step is to convert the photo to black and white, print it and make my edits.

Next I traced it, used the tracing as a pattern, and cut out each pattern piece. The pieces were attached to fabric treated with fusible webbing, cut out, and then fused to a piece of raw silk. Using Jacquard Textile paint and the reference photo as my guide, I painted the collie’s fur and features. Black micron pen rendered his little face beautifully. (sorry, I have no photos of these steps.)

Here is my block after the fusing and painting were complete.

I chose a light color background fabric in a cotton damask. It’s no coincidence that the background fabric was left-over from a bed spread that I made several years ago.

For final touches, I machine-stitched all the edges, added a few ruffles to the tutu with pale peach thread and brushed in some metallic paint for the crown.

This will go into the mail on Monday, along with a few extra pieces of fabric, which the patchwork makers may find useful.

Whimsical and fun. So satisfying to make. I hope that the recipients are pleased.

quilting

SAHRR Quilt Round 3: Oh, My Stars!

Posted on February 21, 2022June 24, 2022 by Laura Kate

Chaos reigned in my studio yesterday as I attempted to make star blocks. Stars were chosen by Roseanne and Sue @ Home Sewn by Us for Round 3 of the round robin quilt-at-home challenge. This picture is me trying to play catch up.

I got behind during round 3. It was that week my mother, aged 91, had a stroke and was taken to hospital. Our father, who is 94, needs a little help at home. In response, my husband and I traveled home to stay with Dad and help out my siblings with Mom’s needs. We took turns visiting Mom daily while she recovered well enough to move to assisted living quarters. It was a busy and emotional time for all of us.

I’m back home now. The temporary crisis has passed, but my mother is no longer the energetic and capable person who raised me. She will need help daily.

Life can be cruel.

So I’m working through the chaos today. But first, here is how I started this block. I married together two weaving samples for the background of the Sky section of my quilt. This area will represent the element Air.

I like the horizontal bands of color. They look like clouds at sunset. To represent the setting sun, I used the foundation paper piecing method and created this:

This piece will be attached to the top of the fringed weaving.

Eventually my stars were finished up.

I sewed them together into a border and attached it to the right of the sunset.

A narrow piece of gray swirled fabric represents the wind.

To finish this block, I attached border strips to the left and bottom.

The fringe flies freely so that it can wave in the breeze. And my studio has been tidied and carpet vacuumed.

Now that the Elements are all present, I am ready for the final round of Stay At Home Round Robin. With a bit of diligence, I’ll have something to show by Sunday, when the linky party ends.

quilting

SAHRR Challenge 5: Earth

Posted on February 17, 2022 by Laura Kate

We are nearing the end of weekly challenges for Stay At Home Round Robin quilt 2022. This week Quilting Gail of gave us options: We could add some appliques to our borders or make our border of rail fence blocks.

https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/102293878/posts/3830168731

I am also running out of options on my Four Elements quilt utilizing vintage weaving samples. This week I had planned to work on the element Earth. My choice of green background fabrics included these two:

I went for the wide one with concentric circles and intersecting arcs. It will represent a forest very well, once I make some appliqued tree trunks. And a bottom border of rail fence border in warm colors will ground the forest into the earth.

Here are the supporting fabrics for this block and the tool I will use to make long, skinny tree trunks.

This part went quickly. I ran some strips through the bias tape maker and ironed them flat. I think three will be enough to suggest a forest.

Quickly sewing together some strip pieces and cutting out five rail fence blocks………

…………I sewed them into a strip and laid it in place.

This is beginning to take shape. I love the print with the brown leaves. It is scaled well for my design. They look almost like real leaves scattered across the forest floor.

After attaching all of the parts completed so far, I realized that I had not considered the right border at all.

Clearly something was needed here. So, I went back to making more rail fence blocks. Adding another 3-inch border will change the proportions of my block, making it a wide rectangle instead of a square. But I felt it was still my best design choice, given the limited number of options I had before me.

I’m delighted with the progress so far. There is still space to add some surface treatments to this block in the form of sashiko stitching, or even a few more appliques should I desire.

To see more quilts made in the Stay at Home Round Robin method, check out the link party here:

https://fresh.inlinkz.com/party/4daeef6d0bee4f99a4550c4b274ba90b

quilting

Giving it Form

Posted on January 18, 2022January 18, 2022 by Laura Kate

The process of making up a quilt from scratch has many challenges. One I face today is building my Stay At Home Round Robin quilt around another maker’s pieces. None of the swatches are the same size or shape. How can I fit them together?

Here’s how I went about finding an answer.

The first step I took was to get them as flat as possible. Each swatch was hemmed by hand on the warp edges to keep it from fraying. As I began carefully picking out the stitches, I marveled at the how small each was. That got me to thinking about the maker, Margaret Howard. And I began to imagine her at her cottage on the lake, where she lived three months of the year. (Since this cottage is still in the family, and I had been there several times, my imagination has lots to work with.)

I imagine that, despite the passage of years, the grounds surrounding the cottage are very little changed. There are towering trees, both deciduous and coniferous, providing lots of shade. The path through the trees to the cottage are lined with wood ferns, all the way up to the door itself.

Margaret is sitting in the main area of the cottage, sewing this hem. She has a view of the lake through a large picture window. While the trees now are quite tall and obscure this view, back then she likely could see the lake easily.

There were other families, her relatives, staying in cabins nearby. Each evening as the sun sank low, they gathered on the shore to toast the passing of the day. I feel certain that Margaret would join them. That bit of the beach is on the east side of the lake. The sun sets directly across the lake from this beach.

Having been there during one of these sunsets, it’s hard to describe exactly how beautiful it is. When the waves on the lake are gentle, one feels that the lake is bringing the colors of the sunset directly to one’s feet, like a precious gift.

**A contemporary view of Shell Lake, with a new metal dock.**

Back then, the silence must have been profound.

Of course, on special occasions, or when the air is too cold, a campfire is a must.

Photo by EKATERINA BOLOVTSOVA on Pexels.com

At this point in my musings, I brought these ideas together, and came up with a plan for the quilt. If you have been following this project in my earlier post, you saw that I sewed together three swatches to form the center block.

Another Round Robin Quilt Challenge

What if I divided the rest of the quilt into four sections, making a large block to anchor each section. And each section would show one of the elements enjoyed by the maker at her cottage on the lake – woods, fire, water, sky. Thinking more deeply about these elements, I realized that they corresponded to the basic elements described by ancient civilizations of the world: Earth, Fire, Water, Air.

To tie everything together, I did some research on the colors that the ancients associated with these elements:

Earth: Green and brown. Fire: Red and orange.

Water: Blue and pastels. Air: White and yellow.

And here is my (somewhat crude) plan for the quilt, sketched in watercolor.

This is my first go at the layout. I’m not sure about the dark sashing. But there will be plenty of time to audition some other fabrics as I work along.