Stitched Bits and a 60 cent bag of scraps

I created this ’stitched bit’ almost two years ago when I began my artistic journey:

I still love looking at it – something in me connects with fabric…!

So, I thought maybe it was time to create another one, and I created one this week:

Just bits of nothing really, and yet oddly calming and quieting to work on.  As I arrange and then re-arrange the ‘bits’ I find myself transported to places of ‘nowhere’.  Everywhere but nowhere.

Thinking about lots of things, but thinking about nothing.

Dreaming many dreams but dreaming of nothing.

Odd.  Calming.  Restoring.

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On one of my jaunts through a thrift store I happened upon a bread bag of scraps in Christmas colors – reds / greens / prints….all obviously cast-off and cut-offs from Christmas Crafts Past and it was ONLY 60 CENTS, so I rescued it from the thrift store and sat down to create something….I added a few buttons, and it slowly started to take shape:

The colors seemed to dictate a Christmas theme, and so I just stayed with that:

kept finding bits….putting them together in interesting combinations:

and I emerged with this:

I included loops on the top and hung it from a rod I had….still haven’t pressed it but I stitched a back to it and I guess I will call it freehand-textile-art….!

From something that someone else considered garbage, or a waste, something (somewhat!) beautiful was able to be created…..isn’t that a great metaphor for our lives?  How many of us live thinking or feeling that all we’ve got left is the garbage, the waste…how much good do we actually have left to offer the world?

How many of us think that what we have to give is worth nothing, or maybe only 60 cents….

Maybe the magic isn’t in our offering.  Maybe the magic is in allowing someone with greater vision and creativity the opportunity to form something beautiful out of it.

I’m just sayin’.

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All this stitching reminds me of some work my friend Julie has done….work completely done with fabric: 

 

hmmm…maybe I’ll have to keep exploring!

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Here is someone else exploring their love of fabric through stitched bits.

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also linked up here:

Latest….

…not alot of words, just photos of recent work!

I cut up an old leather jacket that didn’t sell on etsy, and got lots of great leather pieces….this was just something quick:  THE CUFF:

(I had to try out my two snap putter-onner-tool-thingys that I got at a garage sale for FREE.  yup, FREE  along with a couple of quilting square / triangle measurey things, and elastic and binding and I figure it was about a $70 haul FO FREE…!!!)

 HBI has been spending time in the studio with me….using the sewing machine, making what he plans to be ‘flags’.  The top one has already been modified and is hanging on the studio wall with a chain attached to it.  “Mom, I like it MUCH better with the chain.”   I’ll have to get a picture of it….

I’m encouraging him to look at texture and patterns and find interesting combinations.

This next one is a little stroller quilt I made for my friend Kahla.  It is made out of men’s dress shirts for her new little baby boy!  I left one shirt pocket on so there is a place to put his pacifier…!

oh man…I have like 4 other things on the go out there…just haven’t photographed them….I’m sticking mostly with fabric it seems, but this little project only took a few minutes…:

Remember way back last year I started to get a love on for those covered cheese trays?  Well I did find one this year for the love-of-a-quarter ( didn’t even bargain!)

…started up with a bit o black paint I had kicking around:

and ended up here:

Perfect for my artistic philosophy:

Projects should #1) take less than an hour, #2) take no appreciable skill to complete  #3) that I don’t have to measure or follow a pattern to do, and #4) that I don’t have to spend any $$ on….

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Here’s just a sneak peek at something currently on my table:

Just a quickie…

This one was alot of fun to do!

If you have two t-shirts, scissors and a needle and thread you can do it in an evening or less!

I started by cutting a strip off the bottom of a purple t-shirt….it was a HUGE t-shirt…not even sure why we have it, but that’s the blessing of a scrap bin I guess.  If your standard t-shirt is not wide enough to make a decent length scarf you could always stitch two pieces together.

The flowers are the simplest thing EVER!  I just cut some random size circles out of both colors, and started to play with them.  If you pinch from the middle of the circle, you will see a flower shape emerge quite easily.  I just used my needle and thread to hold the folds in place and stitched them on.

A few fringes at the bottom et voila! 

I see a few more of these in my future….!

August Challenge

so I put a challenge out there for you Facebookers to repurpose just one thing this week – did anyone catch the bug?

I sat down in my studio, determined to ‘create’ something and looked at all the scrappy bits of fabric I have lying around.  I started fiddling, and faddling, and piecing, and something started to emerge….

Who knew that QUILTING would have been one of the original uses for scrappy bits?  I never thought it would be something I could get into because of the time involved, but quite honestly because you can piece them square by square, it might just be something I could get in to! 

It totally fits my philosophy of:

1) taking less than an hour, #2) taking no appreciable skill to complete #3) be easy enough that I don’t have to measure or follow a pattern to do it, and #4) that I don’t have to spend any $$ on….

Here’s what came out:

and then this one….

and then I remembered something I had made last year:

and then I started looking at quilting PATTERNS….my oh my, you could go for years and never make the same square twice.   Anyhew…apparently the center of this is called a modified nine-patch….I just kept adding on….oh, and don’t look too carefully at my seams…by now you know how I roll….

Then I was out at the mall yesterday and I saw the cutest top with ribbon roses on it, and I thought hey!  I could do that…so I didn’t change the thread on my machine and started sewing in circles…..when I do it again, I’ll change the thread and start from the middle….I think it has the potential to be really cute….!  Anyhew…once the flower was done I needed something to put it on, so I whipped up this:

I used creative license in borrowing the phrase from Matt….I hope he doesn’t mind!

So I don’t know if anyone else was playing along, but I sure had fun this week and discovered a whole new genre to play with!

Making a 5 minute hat

so, remember these arms I had left,

after making this bag?

out of this sweatshirt?

One of my commenters on that post put out the idea of making a hat out of the leftovers….so, in 5 minutes flat, I came up with this:

All it took was a few cuts, a line or two of machine stitching and a coupla hand stitches for the ‘fringe’.

Whaddya think?

 

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This fits so perfectly with my artistic/creative philosophy, in that the project must:

1) take less than an hour, #2) take no appreciable skill to complete  #3) be easy enough that I don’t have to measure or follow a pattern to do it, and #4) that I don’t have to spend any $$ on….

 

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Repurposing Trends

…There are alot of places to find inspiration for repurposing old items. Google is my best friend these days when I find myself with something to repurpose….

Take for instance – ZIPPERS.

Wouldya ever have thought about this?????

 

 

Brooches and the like from ZIPPERS…..see more here

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REPURPOSED on Facebook

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Memory Quilt…..

Let me just say right up front, I am not a quilter…never done it, never thought I would explore it….but….last week while at the thrift store, some donations came in from someone’s mother who had recently passed.  I know the daughter as an aquaintance and I was overcome with a thought as I saw all those clothes.

It just seemed like there was SOMETHING that could be done to ease her grieving, at least just a little….so I rummaged through, and pulled out some items and got busy that evening.

Once I had started, I realized that there was still a very strong lingering of her mother’s perfume on these items, and so I told myself I needed to work really fast so that I could present it, with the scent of her mother still ‘alive’ on it.  So…I was up until midnight…cutting, pressing, sewing….and I came up with just a small little lap quilt, or, as I’ve shown here, a neat little roll pillow….

It was just one small thing, that I could do…..

 

Repurposing a sweatshirt with a broken zipper….

One downfall, I suppose, of volunteering a day a week in a thrift store is all the the treasure I come in contact with that really needs saving.  I see it all….all the wastage and excess that most of us have come to live with as normal. 

There are so many possibilties for items people have discarded as trash…

For instance…today I happened upon this Quiksilver sweatshirt that had a broken zipper.  

Now, it would not have been that complicated to replace the zipper….a little time consuming and about 8 bucks.  No doubt the person donating this item didn’t have the time to try and figure it out in order to avoid having to go out and buy another sweatshirt.

So….I begged to take it home and repurpose it.

…..for those of you new to my blog, you need to know I have a propensity for projects that #1) take less than an hour, #2) take no appreciable skill to complete  #3) that I don’t have to measure or follow a pattern to do, and #4) that I don’t have to spend any $$ on….

First I sewed the zipper together by hand….just used brown thread and a needle and sewed that sucker shut.

 

Then I eyeballed and  I simply cut out what I thought looked rectangular.

Then I looked over the rest of it and decided on interesting pieces for the back….I also cut out one of the pockets and sewed it onto what would be the back panel…

Now, I’m not into changing my machine thread just because ( it takes time, and cuts into my hour), so I thought the current color I had on there…an orangy yellow, would make a nice contrast and I just used that to stitch on the pocket.

I don’t know much about adjusting the tension, so on most of my projects, the stitching comes out a little wonky, but that to me, just goes to show that it doesn’t have to be perfect…it just has to work.

After that I took out my handy dandy rotary cutter…( oh, now don’t you go thinking that I went out and spent $$ on this…oh no…I put it on my Christmas list last year and hubby’s equally crafty aunt, saw the value in purchasing it for me…I love her I tell you..!)  …anways, I took out my rotary cutter and matched up the back and front and somewhat tried to even out the edges ( right sides facing together…)

Then, I started stitching the back and front panel together.  Also note the wonky stitching here.  I’m not one to go out a rip it out when that happens…I just go back and sew over it again.  After all, this IS going to be on the inside….if it were on the outside, I probably would reconsider, but maybe not…:)

Ok, we are almost there now…by now, you may have figured out what we are making, but maybe not, so I’ll break the suspense for you…we’re making a shoe bag, or a little carry satchel ( which my 9yo has already claimed as his gym bag for next year…)

So, once you’ve stitched twice with right sides together, you turn it right side out and turn over the edges about an inch, and then slice into it twice so that the string will have somewhere to go.

At this point, I did use pins to pin down the channel all the way around….and I (gasp now..) changed the thread color since I kind of wanted it to disappear on the outside of the bag….

and the measurement thing on your feed plate does come in handy for this job….helps you keep the channel size somewhat consistent as you go…

Next, you feed through your string… ( and make a mental note to change out your badly chipped nailpolish!)

et voila….front and back!

Now, my next dilemma…I’m pretty much left with scraps except for the arms….what can I do with them…?????  ideas????

Repurposing while on Vaca….

..who knows how many crafty little things I will come up with while on vaca….idle hands ‘n’ all….I think I’m just making up for the past few months of nothingness.

Here is another installment of a little girl’s dress made from a  vintage sheet….such a sweet pattern!

Then I had some time on my hands and had seen examples of these floating around the blogosphere….so I thought I had to try my hand at it.  I used a very thick marker, so next time, and there will be a next time…(!), I will use a much thinner marker tip….maybe I’ll include a tutorial too!

 

I played with it in Photoshop and like this one nearly as much!

Repurposing a Wedding Dress

We’ve been hanging onto my mom’s wedding dress, well, since forever….it has been damaged some in all of our moves, and really wasn’t in great condition.

So, when #1 sister decided to get married, we made the decision to cut it up and create some useful items out of it.

First of all, we have crafted the ring bearers’ pillow, which my son(9) will carry the rings on and hand to her stepson(15).

And then, we cut out some strips of the satin and the netting from the full skirt; added a bit of ecru lace that I scrounged up, and so far, have half a dozen ’shabby roses’ made. 

We had thought my son(9) would carry these down the aisle as well, pausing to put three ( for three children) of them on a table where Mom’s picture will sit, and then hand the other three to my Dad…but we’re not sure about all that yet.  Not sure how that would work as he walks #1 sister down the aisle….  any ideas from blogland?

 

 

It’s been fun having the sewing machine going again….we are a long way from having my studio back up and running, but in the meantime, the dining room table does just fine…!