Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Recycled T-Shirt Zipper Bag Project




I made my friend Kristin (Lily's former dog trainer) a zippered bag made from an old t-shirt and some cute fabric. Lily was adopted from the Plano Animal Shelter and we are big fans of pet adoption, and since Kristin works with animals I thought she'd like it. (She did! She emailed me after she got it in the mail!)

This was the first project I've used a zipper in since college so I was a little rusty but I think it turned out okay!

Scarf Made From School Spirit Shirts



I've been teaching my classes how to make new things from old things (known most commonly as "re-purposing" or "recycling"). One of my recent projects was a scarf that I made from an excess of school spirit shirts (when you've worked at the same school for nearly 5 years you end up with LOTS of them.) So here is my scarf project!

The Thread Organization Project




My grandma loved to sew, and when she passed away she left many spools of thread, yards of fabric and various notions to me to use. For the longest time I couldn't even open the box of thread and bobbins---it made me sad because I'd catch a waft of her perfume everytime so I'd close the box, push it under the table and decide to come back to it later.

I had some time off (about a week) while Lucas was home sick with RSV so I decided that I needed to do some organizing in my crap...er...craft room. I bought pegboard about 2 months ago so that I could organize the thread but hadn't gotten around to it yet. As I was free to work on it, I dug out the box, opened the lid, smelled my grandma's perfume again and decided to buck up and get on with it.

Many of the spools of thread were very old--so old that they are on wooden spools. I cherish that kind of thing so I took all of those and put them in a mason jar and tied a ribbon on them. They are much more special to me as decoration than sewn into any piece of fabric. The rest got divided up by hue and hung on wooden pegs on the wall. Here is my finished project. I'm proud of myself for finally finishing it, though I cannot say that I didn't cry a few time while I was at it. I love you and miss you, Grandma and I hope my work has made you proud.