Projects

All the knitted gifts are finished! Well, the knitting is all finished. I still need to finish felting one pair of clogs to fit the recipient. My love wasn’t quite sure what to make of them… still not sure the clogs will get him to the hot tub any more often, but at least we will have extra feet protectors when friends come to visit and soak.

The arm socks for the boys and their girls turned out well. The two pair that went over the elbow need to be tried on to be sure of the fit – those boys haven’t made it home yet, but I think they will work.

Almost felt sort of lost last night when I didn’t have anything to pick up to work on! Then I sort of made up for that today.

About 10 years ago I made a blanket for my eldest son out of t-shirts he had aquired from various cross country and 5K road races. At the time, I really didn’t know how to work with t-shirts in a large project like that, nor did I really know anything much about quilting; I sewed the shirt tops and sleeves together and then sewed a backing around it – no batting and no stitching to hold the two layers together. Over the years it became quite battered. Some of the shirts developed holes and rips and the backing shredded. Dan was ready to throw it away.

After a wash and a ripping off of the backing materials that was still hanging on, we started over. Fusible interfacing was added to help stabilize and strengthen the knit shirts, flannel backing and bamboo/cotton batting were added and made into a self-binding. I thought I would do some machine quilting in each t-shirt section, but boy, did that idea get changed rapidly while doing the first section! On a quilting frame with a long arm it would work great, but…. Ties of embroidery thread look just fine! I’ll finish the remake with some sheer fabric fused over the holey areas tomorrow.

We figure after another 10 years of so, we’ll replace the shirts and keep the backing/batting going!

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