Tuesday, July 09, 2019

Whenever I go to opshops I keep an eye out for good quality shirts to add to the collection.  They need to be washed, then when I have a large pile I'll sit down one night and pull them apart.  I usually do this when I'm tired and don't feel like sewing, and I just watch TV and cut the shirts into usable pieces.  I finished Tumelo Trail last year, and had a pile of 5" Churn Dashes cut out, but then I seemed to stall.  Other projects appealed more and the shirt fabrics and scraps were packed away.

A couple of weeks ago I cut up the latest batch of shirts, and dug out the Churn Dash blocks to see if I wanted to go on and finish them.
They looked better than I remembered, so I started cutting strips from all the new shirts, and kitting up blocks. After  while I felt a bit lost, I had no idea what size quilt I was trying to make, and how many blocks I'd need.

EQ8 to the rescue again.
72 blocks would make a decent size quilt, so I went back to the cutting board and cut even more strips.  Then I cut those strips into 2.5" HSTs, and 1.5" squares, and kitted up the 40 or so blocks I'd need.  I had fun, but what a mess!  And it didn't even make a dent in the shirts.  That's when I decided to cut out enough 3.5" strips for another quilt.
And then I sewed a few blocks to make sure I liked the way it looked.

And now I have another whole quilt to kit and piece.  The pile of shirts hasn't gone down at all, I think I'll have to piece the backings for these quilts out of them too, but I'm really enjoying working with this reclaimed fabric.

4 comments:

  1. Both quilts I like very much, so I hope you continue and enjoy making them.

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  2. I'm loving your blocks from the reclaimed shirts :) You've inspired me to kit up some blocks from my reclaimed fabrics!

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  3. I love your scrappy reclaimed shirt blocks--reminds me that I have some of my own somewhere---lol! I like your plan for them and the new project is going to be a fun one too.

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  4. A girl after my own heart 💟, i love working with recycled fabrics they have a softness to them that cant be beat. Love yours...

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