Using what you already have – A recycled lifestyle…

“Oh, I can’t sew…

May 31, 2024thriftwizard1 Comment

My teacher told me I have two left hands”… Madam, you are around 70 now; that long-gone teacher has been sitting inside your head, telling you you’re useless, there’s no use even trying, for over 60 years… Obviously, I can’t say that! But I can, and do, think it, all too often. Some of my teachers did that to me, too, though ultimately it didn’t stick. (Which is probably why I was beyond furious when my eldest’s DT teacher slapped him down for daring to think outside the box and come up with a entirely-workable alternative to the standard “tumbling acrobat” project. Luckily it doesn’t seem to have blighted his creativity, as has been done to so many children over the years.) Why do we so easily believe it, and as parents, put up with it?

I’ve just done another one of those events where we are basically challenging people to think about how they choose their clothes, and what effect their choices will have on the world our descendants will have to live in. Last year, I did really well at the same event; lots of people were open-minded, willing and able to access their innate creativity. But this year, many attendees just seemed to want to buy the handmade/re-made/upcycled look, so although I was delighted to sell a few handmade trinkets, most of my lovely vintage fabrics remained on the stall. It was still well worth my while, and a delight to be trading alongside so many talented makers & menders, but ultimately a little discouraging, in the sense that so many people don’t seem to see any point even trying to make, mend or re-make their own garments no matter how much they love them, or originally paid for them. A button missing, a hem coming down, and it’s off to the Tip or the ragman, via the charity shop – who do not mend things, or put anything damaged out for sale.

I clearly hit a nerve with one or two, who reacted as if I’d suggested they became a slave for a day; how did we come to associate creativity – sewing, cooking, gardening, for example – with drudgery? From my point of view, making stuff is a delight, something I’m very lucky to have time to indulge in, even if I can’t afford brand new equipment or supplies. (That said, by now, I simply wouldn’t want to – I prefer to work with things that have had a previous “life” and clearly come with stories attached.) But I can understand how frustrating it can be for some, if they try and continually fail at whatever they wanted to do; at least they did try. Because normally, if you don’t do well at something on the first try, you should try, try and try again, as someone who appreciated spiders as much as I do once said. None of us will be masters the first time we try something; making mistakes is how we learn. Things get easier; you learn tips & tricks, you talk to people ahead of you on that path and learn from them. You try things out (easiest if you haven’t spent a fortune on supplies) and go with what works, remembering what doesn’t, and working out why.

Sadly people tell me they just don’t have the time. I sigh for them and agree, but can’t help thinking of a young Eastern European single Mum I’ve come across, who makes & sells stunning macramé items in the evenings, after she’s finished work, cooked the supper, and her child has gone to bed. She learnt to do this from YouTube videos on her phone, initially using garden string. She just tried, with whatever came to hand, persevered, & succeeded. It won’t make her a fortune, she’ll probably never be able to ditch the day job, but she does make useful (quite possibly essential) pocket-money from doing something she enjoys and her customers genuinely appreciate. And no-one would have blamed her for just sitting down & watching TV…

Making & mending with textiles, yarns & fibres is not for everyone, I do know. But I also feel that there’s a vast tranche of people out there who could, and would, if only they had the confidence to try, and it wasn’t so very much easier not to…

Weaving new from old…

May 14, 2024thriftwizardLeave a comment

Woven mostly during a Dorset Guild of Weavers, Spinners & Dyers workshop with the lovely Riita Sinkonnen-Davies, my “Weaving New from Old” project was woven on a little old Dryad 4-shaft loom, still with metal heddles and tied together with various rather random bits of string.

(Spot the error where one shaft had dropped…)

The fabrics I chose were all old duvet covers, three of them pure cotton but the other two 50/50 polycotton. I wasn’t sure that the rainforest print, with the orange/turquoise/green colours, would work with the dominant pinks & purples of the other fabrics, but in the event, it brought the mix alive. I’d intended to make a simple table runner, something we didn’t have & would use.

Although I warped the loom as I would my knitters loom, by running round the dining table and a tucked-in carver chair, it somehow ended up several inches longer than the 6′ table! So I decided to cut it & use two thirds for the table runner (now about 4′ long) and one third to make a bag; I can always use another bag. The table runner is already in use, although I have yet to back it. Every mealtime I spot another mistake, but I love it anyway. As do the cats, needless to say… On the bag, I have “laced” in the row where one of the shafts had fallen out of play, hence only half of the warps are there; it will get hard use carrying various projects around, and that would form a weak point, so I decided to lace it down in a different colour to the two warp yarns. (I’ve used the same colour (blue) to stitch the handle on.) Once the table runner has a backing, I will probably stitch a pattern quilting-style over the weave to stabilise the other place where this had happened, and a few places where the shuttle had skipped a warp – it’s likely I was nattering, not concentrating!

The bag is lined with some old canvas that I’d rescued, probably originally part of an outdoor cushion cover, thinking just to stitch a tough bag from that. There is, of course, a pocket inside. The handle is finger-woven (or braided?) from the duvet fabrics, ripped in 2″ strips as I would for a twined-weave project. The “fastening” is finger-woven from narrow strips left over from the workshop, and I’ve used an old mother-of-pearl bead from a broken pair of ear-rings, secured by a little ribbon rose found by my sewing machine. These were fastened on with old button thread, even though it’s not the best colour; my aim was to use what I already had rather than buy new, which seemed most appropriate.

I’m very happy with the results, however many blunders I made and however dubious my choice of colours, and can’t wait to tackle more projects – or to find a bigger loom (again) now that we have a little more space…

Poppy & Jingles appreciating my efforts, and wondering if it’s teatime yet…

Waiting for winter to blow away…

March 12, 2023March 13, 2023thriftwizard1 Comment

Six months between posts? It won’t do… but there you go. I just didn’t feel I had anything interesting to say, but I did have far too much to do, as usual. And here we are, at the end of a cold winter that seems to have ground on and on; my head thinks it’s time to start planting this year’s food, yet my heart misgives me, as another, vastly more talented, writer once put it. Instinct tells me we’re not quite there yet… though the signs of spring are slowly increasing with every passing day. My propagator is full of things that need a long growing season, like tomatoes & chillis, but it’s still too cold to transfer them to my little greenhouse.

All sorts of interesting thoughts have wandered across the wrinkled surfaces of my mind in the last six months; most of them have promptly exited stage left, never to be seen again. (Can you tell we went to the theatre last night?!) Today’s random distractions are the scenes depicted on old Japanese china, some of which has ended up in this household; I’m not in the slightest bit interested in financial value, and these battered old bits probably don’t have any. But what are these guys (and gals) doing? How are they doing it, and why? Are there well-known & familiar stories being depicted on them, or are they just pretty scenes dreamt up in the artist’s imagination? Enquiring minds (well, this one, anyway) wish to know! More images will follow…

Who are these guys? What are they up to? One of three pictures of them on this broken vase.

What else has happened? On the creative front, I’ve made a number of items; from new-bought material this time as I’m struggling to find secondhand stretch fabric that’s sturdy enough for re-making. I was very fed up with not being able to find tops that fitted & suited me, in fabric I liked, so when I found a pattern that had the right neckline, the right mount of simple shaping, and variable length sleeves so a sensible result was actually possible, I leapt into action, visited the fabric shop down West, purchased some good-quality stretch cotton jersey, and have duly made myself two ¾-sleeve tops, and two short-sleeved. Plus three simple nighties that might last longer than a couple of months, cut out round an existing one that fitted well but was long overdue for ragging. Three straightforward vest-tops from the (ample) offcuts; the nighties were cut from the edge or the fold & there was a lot of fabric left in the centre. All the fabrics I used had enough left over to make some more “underthings” too. I’ve started another rag-rug on the twining loom, using up an old favourite duvet cover that had worn very thin. I’m continuing to reduce the mess in my sewing room; I shouldn’t have “rescued” so much stuff when my mother went into her care home two years ago, as I still haven’t managed to sort it all out & move it on!

I’m currently working on some “visible” mending projects and have made another simple jacket from an old curtain, a cheap throw & a duvet cover. So yes, still busy on the upcycling front, and back trading every now & then.

Embroidered bees hide stains on a beautifully-soft child’s pure wool jumper.

Off now to hunt for some more intriguing scenes from old Japanese china! Here’s one from a lovely necklace created by a friend:

What’s going on here? Are those “prayer flags” hanging from the “washing” line, on their way to Heaven? Is the presumed supplicant asking the probable-scholar to write a prayer for him? And – which volcano is that, erupting in the background?

Sometimes, it just won’t do…

March 18, 2022thriftwizardLeave a comment

Well, spot the sometimes-blogger who completely lost her blogging mojo… I don’t know why , I just felt that I didn’t have anything interesting to say. Or, for that matter, do… But having just annoyed myself intensely, please forgive me if I give myself an online talking-to!

So I decided to make a rag rug for our eldest son and his lovely partner, who are about to move into their own first-bought home. I know that they will be choosing their furniture & decor carefully, and of course it’s hard to gauge what might “fit” until you can see how their plans are working out – and if they’re anything like us, things don’t so much go according to the masterplan as just fall into place. They’ll do… I thought I’d just go along with something completely practical, which can be used anywhere – a bathmat, a door mat, a sleeping mat for their adorable dachshund, a boot-liner for the car. There was already a warp on the loom; I’d intended to make a mat for the back seat of my van, but kind of lost my way over winter with that as well. Anyway, to cut a long story short, the warp was made from leftover bits of an old sheet that had been cut into strips for a completely different project, several years ago.

I should have known that a cut warp was never going to be as satisfactory as a torn warp for a twined-weave project; it hadn’t been cut completely straight on the “grain”, so the warp was constantly “shedding” threads, which stick up in the finished weaving. And enough came away as I went along that I became slightly anxious that it wouldn’t be as strong in the middle as it needs to be, to take the ferocious tension. Luckily – it sufficed.

The weft strips were a few bits of my husband’s old, torn jeans, an old, frayed turquoise seersucker tablecloth and two-and-a-half reclaimed duvet covers from the recycling warehouse. Total expenditure, £2; 50p each for the 4 bought items, with half of one duvet cover and a few strips left over.

So they picked up the keys today. And I really wanted there to be a parcel for them on the doorstep, so I carried on “over, under, twist!”-ing ’til late at night on Tuesday. I was aware I’d made a bit of an error at one point, but thought, it’s never going to be completely symmetrical, it’s in the nature of the beast to be a little bit chaotic – it’s a rag-rug, it’ll do. So I carried on.

I came down on Wednesday morning, took one look, and oh my goodness – NO!!! It would NOT do. The error shrieked and glared at me; I knew I’d have to undo half of what I’d done the evening before and put it right. If it was anywhere in my sight, the wrongness would just leap out at me, even though I’m no perfectionist. So I spent a merry couple of hours twisting backwards.

No, no, no, no, no! 4+ rows of turquoise where 3 would be *enough*…7 rows+ to unpick, half-done when pictured.

The moral of this story being – STOP when you’re tired, and start making mistakes! I have known this for many years – go off & do something else, sleep on it, come back to your project when you’re refreshed and not before! But once again, I carried on long past the point where I should have stopped… Despite the setback, I still got it finished and posted in time, and it arrived today – the day they picked up the keys for their own first lovely home. Phew…

Just asking – has anyone else out there struggled to get going with projects lately? In the unforgettable words of a dear friend – are you feeling, like I was, somewhat oomph-lacking?

Here we are, nearly the end of May…

May 23, 2021May 23, 2021thriftwizardLeave a comment

…and I’m going flat out in the garden and at the allotment again. It’s still too cold put much out, and now what I have planted out is in danger of drowning, but our little greenhouse is full to bursting of tiny plantlets waiting to gallop into their full potential when conditions allow. There’s plenty of infrastructure work still to do up at the allotment to get ready for them, but I’ve hurt my back so will have to wait a few days more before I can get on top of that. In the meantime I’ve been cooking up an idea for a self-built “tomato-house” in an under-utilised space round the front…

*Seedlings ready to go in. But not into a bog…*

But whenever I’ve wandered over to the allotment to tend the potatoes and brave seedlings that have poked their tiny heads up (Yay! Parsnips! For the first time ever!) I’ve been saddened to walk past several “landscape gardeners”‘ pick-ups parked outside people’s homes, with shredders going full blast and branch after blossom-laden branch being fed into the chippers. Rootballs & whole shrubs chucked onto the lorries, bag after bag of rich topsoil going to the dump & sterile sand being barrowed in, followed by rolls of astro-turf. Massive, expensive plastic-rattan suites & flimsy “gazebos” are being delivered to take up half the outdoor space and blow-up hot-tubs to cover the rest. And the big new “executive” houses going up in the new estates all round our little town have tiny pocket-hanky gardens. It’s left me wondering how most people see gardens these days; do they just want their outdoor spaces to be a place to “be” in, or entertain in? Our local estate agents seem only to see gardens as potential building plots.

I do know that people are very stressed and don’t want to have to bother with “work” in the garden when they finally get home after queueing in traffic for half an hour to get through all the roadworks caused by the new builds. I know that the supermarkets have plenty of fresh produce you can buy for pennies, so why bother to grow your own? I know that to many, wildlife is something that lives “out there” and any living thing that shows up in your space is a pest or potential danger that should be got rid of; toads are slimy, hedgehogs prickly, bees, wasps and anything that looks vaguely like them might sting or bite, birds may poo on your expensive rattan suite, bats get stuck in your expensive hairdo, and so on. But don’t people have any idea what they are missing out on?

*Some non-supermarket produce entertaining me…*

When the sun shines, our little garden is a bit of a sun-trap, and there’s no greater blessing than to doze gently in a chair, listening to the hum of next-door’s bees coming in to drink at the pond and pollinate my crab-apples. We have a small solar-powered fountain, bought for a few pounds in an online sale, to keep the water clear & fresh for the tadpoles that will grow into frogs and toads that will keep the slugs at bay. The antics of the two hedgehogs whose “range” includes our garden amuse us hugely after dark, and we’re privileged to have one of them “nest” regularly in the lesser-visited recesses of the garage. The scent of the pittosporum at dusk in spring, and the roses all day in summer, are a constant delight. And the taste & texture of home-grown produce just beats any samey-same affordable supermarket vegetable hands-down. Ah well, perhaps I just belong in an older & kinder version of the world…

(For UK residents, here’s a link to a petition to Parliament asking for a ban on artificial grass in gardens: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/585520)

In other news, I’ve been making-do & mending as usual, and would love to share a little project with you all. Elder daughter had a favourite pillow-sham for many years, one of those nice M&S patchwork ones in pretty shades of blue & pink. I forget where it came from originally, but it’s lived here for at least ten years. However since about Christmas it’s languished at the bottom of the “putting-away” pile of clean washing, and when I looked more closely at it, I realised that it had actually disintegrated past the point of no return. But she couldn’t quite bear to rip it up for rags or just chuck it out.

So the parts that aren’t too worn are now two lavender-stuffed hearts, to scent her wardrobe or pop under her pillow for a good night’s sleep. There are two tiny bits left which might make a pin-cushion. Sometimes you don’t have to harden your heart & chuck out items with fond memories that have “had it” – it’s always worth thinking, what might they be next?

*…becomes a well-stuffed lavender heart – a fitting end?*

Pass the fatted calf…

March 4, 2021March 4, 2021thriftwizardLeave a comment

…we have a son returning home! Son no. 3 has spent most of the last ten years studying & living away, though he’s been home for holidays when in the UK. But he’s finally run out of stipend, hopefully having completed his thesis, and will be returning to the family fold imminently. And the bedroom required for a 28-year-old academic is not the bedroom that the 18-year-old student left behind…

It’s a different room, for a start. He used to have the smallest bedroom at the top of the stairs, but now the bigger, downstairs room that’s functioned as the guest room for the last ten years is more appropriate. He has a large collection of academic reference books to accommodate; my poor husband has already remarked many times that our elder daughter & I should just go & live in a library, so there isn’t much spare bookcase-space available. He will be job-hunting and keeping up to date in his field, so the room needs to work as a serious study as well as a bedroom.

He sent through a plan of how he thought it could be laid out, and as a little joke, included a wing-back chair, Sherlock-Holmes-style. It just so happens that I am always rescuing a certain make of old wing-back chair for an upholsterer friend, who re-makes them into the most fabulous, desirable & comfortable chairs going. But alas, all my usual sources are closed just now, so I put a request on Freecycle, not expecting anything as there were several listed locally on Ebay at exceedingly silly prices, i.e. more than my friend asks for them after she’s done them up professionally. To my astonishment, I got a reply within the hour, and picked up a modern, but very comfortable, reclining wingback chair the next day, for free. Joke returned! We may never get him out of there, though…

Then the hunt was on for serious bookcases. I answered an advert on Facebook Marketplace, for a tall painted wooden bookcase from a certain Scandinavian emporium. They did say it needed some TLC, but it was priced very reasonably at £10. We squeezed it into my van & bore it home triumphantly, but on closer inspection, though very heavy & originally very sturdy, it was actually particle-board and had been left outside for too long; the damage to the weight-bearing base was irreversible. But it hasn’t gone to waste; the shelves and one side have gone up into the loft as loft-boarding where there wasn’t any, and the damaged side has been trimmed to size & deployed across two (also Scandinvian) tall bedside tables to make a perfect, and rather stylish, laptop desk for my husband to work-from-home on, teamed with a comfortable office chair that came to us via Freegle. I also rescued the dowelling and other fixings from the shelves; they’re pretty standard across the whole range of their furniture, which we have a fair bit of, some of it even bought new. The only bits that went to the tip were the top & bottom trim and the flimsy back-boards.

I spotted an advert for all sorts of free furniture from a big Edwardian house being cleared only about 400 yards away from us. Old stuff, lovely quality, but mostly much too big & dark for modern homes. But there were two tall bookcases… I dashed off a polite request & heard straight back; the chap organising the clearance was upcountry, but thought they were a pretty standard size, i.e. 6′ tall x 3′ wide, so I replied that we would love to give both of them a home, please. So we went to pick them up from his brother the next day; they’re absolutely lovely in a shabby-chic sort of way, but actually over 7′ tall and well over 3′ wide! Only one would fit into the bedroom, but we’ve managed to make space for the other one in the hallway, replacing two smaller bookcases, one of which has also gone into the bedroom.

But he also needs a desk. And not the neat little desk that’s been in there all along; it needs to accommodate his laptop, a couple of big reference books plus notebooks, pens etc. and have plenty of space underneath for restless legs. However, add in the bed, wardrobe & a large chest of drawers (with small bookcase on top) and the remaining space is limited; 4’/120cm wide by about 20″/50cm deep is about all that will fit. Suggestions have been winging their way through the ether, but nothing ready-made has yet hit the spot in terms of style or size; he desperately doesn’t want white-on-white. However, a couple of days ago I picked up a Gumtree’d “Freebie” black desk top, also originally from the Scandinavian emporium, may their name be ever-blessed; I knew you could still buy legs to fit it very reasonably. So they’ve been ordered, and the desk top cut to size; it turned out to be easier to cut particleboard than I’ve always thought, given a decent jig-saw. I’ve added a board at the back to stop stuff falling off, as it’s side-on to the doorway. So, there will be a desk, which will have cost next-to-nothing, and *** It Will Do *** until he finds one of his own choosing, or the job of his dreams and moves out again!

After Christmas, when he announced he’d be returning home for some indefinable length of time, I was panicking mightily that I’d have to spend quite a lot of money on new furniture that really needs to be spent maintaining my van, as I’ve earned next-to-nothing over the last year & will need to go out & sell stuff on virtually every fine day this summer. But given time & access to a computer, I’ve been able to assemble bits & bobs that fit the bill for very nearly nothing. Thank you so very, very much, to all Freecycle/Freegle volunteers, Gumtree and Facebook Marketplace!

Stashbuster 6, for a real baby this time!

February 1, 2021February 8, 2021thriftwizard1 Comment

One of my auction “job lot of fabric” buys recently included a part-made cot quilt top; straightforward squares in shades of blue & white with ditsy prints, it was nice enough that I kept it, thinking I’d do something with it soon. So when I heard that a young friend was expecting a baby boy, it sprang to mind, although I’ve never believed that it has to be blue for a boy or pink for a girl. I hauled it out, and yes, it was just the right size.

On closer inspection, it was a bit – curious. The squares had been beautifully hand-stitched together, very neatly. But the maker had evidently heard that quilts need binding, so they had carefully hand-stitched two rows of commercial bias binding, one blue and one red, round the edge. But they hadn’t been able to decide what to do with the corners, which were all different. One had been overlapped, the next one mitred, and the other two hadn’t been finished at all, with random bits of binding left flapping, one of them much too short. I think at that point, they’d got frustrated, put it aside, and never returned to it. We’ve all had projects like that… but what a waste of all that careful stitching!

What to do? I sandwiched a piece of cotton batting between the top & a chunk of soft old candy-striped flanelette sheet, and hand-stitched the red edge down over the edge, then machine-stitched the “border” to give it some stability. One corner was almost bare, though. So I found some reds in my fabric cupboard; I tried folding rectangles over to make squares to cover the corners, but nothing looked quite right until I though of appliqé-ing little hearts over them, which somehow brought the whole thing “alive”.

*Little hearts hiding some rather random corners*

So that’s another bit of stash busted; not all my own work, but I hope I’ve done the original maker justice, and that my young friend’s baby will snuggle happily into it or play on it for some years to come. Now I think I might do some experimenting; there’s still – rather a lot – of stash, not to mention lockdown, left to go…

*Everyday cot quilt for* *a young friend’s baby…*

Sooo – Christmas has gone away…

January 9, 2021February 8, 2021thriftwizard2 Comments

… the family have eaten leftovers for a week, my allotment’s a weedy mess, the house is a tip, we’re back in lockdown again, I have 101 half-done or not-even-started projects lying around, and what am I doing?

Weaving shirt-seams, of course! I have 3 big bags of little strips of fabric cluttering up my sewing room, from dismantling lots of shirts/jeans/pyjamas/tablecloths & tea-towels for quilt fabric & other projects, and there’s only so many you can use as plant-ties. I’d been keeping them for a course on Weaving with Waste that I’d booked onto last September, which sadly couldn’t take place. There’ll be another one, of course, Once All This Has Blown Over (OATHBO in certain online quarters) but just imagine how much more I’ll have accumulated by then. Though my New Year’s resolutions, as usual, include putting myself on a Fabric Diet ; no more fabric will be acquired (new or otherwise) until at least half of what I currently have as been used up or sold on.

I have done some things: my Other Half has a second pair of cosy PJ bottoms made from an old flannelette sheet. They were cut out months ago when I made the first pair, and put aside in my enormous “to do” pile. DD2 has mended PJs and a new pair too, from some soft but sturdy brushed cotton found in a charity shop last spring at £3 for about 4m of 60″ wide fabric in a cheery red & white plaid. And I’ve finally managed to make a pair of what my great-aunt would have called, in a breathless whisper, “Underthings” (i.e. knickers) from an old t-shirt; not rocket science, I know, and of course I could just buy a pack of new ones, but it pleases me to re-use pretty & still-decent fabric & keep my money safe from those who peddle poor-quality “underthings” that fall apart in a few weeks. I’m pleased to report that they fit well and are very comfortable!

I’ve also cut out & attempted to sew a warm top from blanket-type fabric acquired new, as a treat, a couple of years ago. Needless to say, I struggled with this. My overlocker didn’t seem to “like” the fabric & kept breaking one specific thread. At first I thought the thread must be weak, so changed it, but the next reel also broke every few stitches. Then I thought I must somehow have bent the needle, so changed that. But now I’ve realised that it was “pilot error”; the loopers & needles need to be threaded in a specific order, and once one thread had broken & been replaced, that order was undone and the machine was struggling to form stitches correctly. I’m hoping I still have enough fabric to sort it out, as I may need to re-make the sleeves entirely, I’d chewed so much off them before stopping to read the instructions… oh dear. You can’t cure stupid, as they say, by changing the needle!

So yes, plenty going on here, and there are still about 98 projects in the “to-do” pile, so I’m looking on lockdown 3 as a chance to clear as much from that pile as possible. Let’s see if I can end up with a chance to see the floor of the sewing room/spare bedroom once more…

*Not the most “helpful” of assistants, really…*

Take 3 discarded shirts and an old tablecloth…

November 30, 2020February 8, 2021thriftwizardLeave a comment

… add an Ikea cushion cover and a strip of old duvet cover, mix well, and :-

I had a gorgeous, but sadly very stained, 1950s embroidered tablecloth sitting in my stash, and I’ve been determined to do something lovely with it since I first found it. It was so bright and cheery, yet it would never have been put for sale at a charity shop; thanks to those stains, it would just have gone into the rag-bag. I could have made umpteen cards from the motifs – and have made a few – but didn’t want to dissipate the prettiness too much. So it seemed a good idea to base the last little lockdown stashbuster quilt on what was left of it.

I also wanted to do a little bit of actual piecing, rather than haphazard flinging together of strips. As you can probably tell, it’s not my natural medium; far too painstaking, but it suited the subject matter! I’m a LOT happier with this one, though it’s a tad undersized at 2½’ x 3’2″; this was dictated by the size & number of motifs available. Perhaps a crib, pram or pushchair quilt?

Oh, and the batting’s a bit – different. Cotton “Bump” interlining extracted from some fabulous but badly light-damaged old curtains; it’s been washed before re-use, to control any shrinkage, but it still seems soft, fluffy, & lightweight, not unlike the “official” batting I used in the others. Just a tad less inclined to pull apart, so now the hunt will be on for old interlined curtains…

Anyway, time for a break from the sewing machines now! As lockdown comes to an end, and we gear up for the festive season – well, as festive as it can be in these socially-distanced days – I need to concentrate on sorting the house, the presents and the food out for a while. Time enough for stitching, or spinning, or weaving, when the excitement, and the workload, have simmered down…

Not doing that again in a hurry…

November 26, 2020February 8, 2021thriftwizardLeave a comment

*How to mangle denim… but Poppy approves!*

Well. Lockdown Stashbuster 4 is finally here, but I’m not exactly pleased with it. Best, I think, to describe it as a learning process!

For a long time I’ve wanted to do something with denim; I suppose I have, but never anything I’ve been proud of. The idea I had in my head for my “quick & dirty” use-it-up cot quilt no. 4 was a variation on denim “bricks in a wall” – basically 2½” wide strips, cut in random shortish lengths, joined seams-up & chenilled, with a few contrast stripes. (The eagle-eyed who know us well will spot the edges of our old kitchen curtains playing the part of the contrast stripes.) I didn’t think it would take very long…

1st lesson: most modern jeans are woven with a degree of stretch. I thought I’d specifically excluded any stretch denim when choosing the old jeans to chop up, but it turns out that most of them stretched a little in one direction or the other. Which caused the finished top to skew frantically, though I’d have sworn all my seams were straight whilst I was stitching them. In the end I had to cut about 3″ off each side, one at the “top” and the other at the “bottom”, to make it look remotely rectangular but there was no way I could get rid of a marked “bowing” effect in the middle.

Lesson 2: some jeans are fairly lightweight, others are – not. The difference in fabric weights means some “bricks” are “dominant” when it comes to chenilling, and look bigger in the finished article. And the heavier-weight fabrics are just that – heavier – and my shoulders were aching like mad with all the pushing & pulling by the time I’d finished quilting it very roughly. Next time I have an urge to use denim in an actual quilt, it’ll be lightweight, non-stretch shirt & skirt fabric only!

Lesson 3: choosing a fairly heavy calico for the backing wasn’t a particularly sane move either, though at least it “balances” the top. This quilt would work well for a restless toddler; it’s too heavy for an actual baby.

However, it’s not all bad news, because lesson 4 is that I’m no longer terrified of appliqué. I wanted some brighter splashes, and kites somehow floated into my mind (as they often do!) so I just ironed some double-sided interfacing onto some scrap red cotton, cut out some little kite shapes, ironed them on and using a very tiny zig-zag, stitched them down. The tails are just a double line of red lockstitch, going over some red frayed selvedge scraps.

The centre contrast stripe has a strip of old hand-woven braid stitched on, rescued from an old sewing box that came in on an auction-won job lot. I had no idea whether it would wash well; it might have shrunk or bled colours, but I thought it had probably been washed many times before, & luckily it had & it didn’t.

At this point, the big Pfaff decided it had had enough for now and wanted to go off to see its friends at the repair shop for a service. Fair enough, we can cope without it for a month, and to be honest, it’s high time; having your sewing machine properly serviced every now & then is worth every penny, in my estimation. So Stashbuster 4 was bound with strips cut from an old shirt-back, then quilted on the old treadle. Very badly; I was getting rather fed up with it by then. I spent the next few days snipping the seams in every spare moment. Take it from me, denim is tough stuff. As well as hurting my hands & defeating my little chenilling scissors, forcing me to resort to spring-loaded shears, this caused a lot of fluff on the floor and knackered one of the heads of our hoover. Hopefully mended now!

So today I snipped the last seam with a sigh of relief & popped it into the washing machine. Needless to say, it wasn’t done with us yet; the washing machine pump blocked, so it failed to drain. But luckily I managed to clear the filter, which mysteriously contained 9 hair grips, a large scrunchy, and rather a lot of tiny fragments of denim. This seems to have put it right, thank heavens. We could do without having to call the engineers, just now.

Needless to say, I didn’t get the landing curtains finished. They really should be the next project, if only because that will clear a LOT of space in there, and make the landing look a bit less 1995. And we are getting close to the end of Lockdown II, though like most people in England we’ll be moving into Tier 2, so still fairly constrained, although the incidence of Covid-19 here is actually pretty low. But so is the hospital provision…

Anyway, end of lockdown notwithstanding, I have another idea; not sure if this one will be Lockdown 5, or Tier-2:1, but I’ve hardly made a dent in my stash yet…