Yes, what to do????
I have some old T’s that have seen better days but I’ve kept them because I either A/like the print on the front and haven’t figured out what to do with it yet, B/ I am delusional that I will someday fit them again, or C/ a little of A and a little of B.
I guess I could shred them all up and try to look like a young tanned trendy thing, but at the age of 35 I’d probably look more like a dehydrated leather bag cast away who has swam back from a year-long stint on a desert island…. Or a hobo. They look great on beautiful young teenage things, but sadly they are not for me.
I could make grocery bags out of them, but been there done that, and didn’t find them suitable for carrying a whole lot so I ditched that idea.
I could make T-shirt yarn and, I dunno, knit new ones? That would be weird….. Or I could crochet catch-all baskets because the last thing I need is places to put more things. Thumbs down to that. So what to do?
Well in the end I opted for the more traditional options…..
My daughter is fascinated with detail at her tender age of 5 months so the first thing I did was to make a safe soft toy with an appropriate T-shirt print. I cut the image out and retraced the shape of the piece I had cut out onto another piece of fabric (in this case wool) for the back. I next cut a long rectangular piece of fabric to act as the side and give the pillow toy some depth. Easy peasey, I stitched it all together, stuffed it full of batting and viola. She loves to stare at it and run her fingers against the print and as she gets older she can delight in the little animals hidden in the branches.
I also needed a door stop. I made this hipster bunny in the depths of winter as we needed something heavy-ish to sit behind the door to discourage our cat from running and shoulder barging the door all the way open to enter, and in the process letting all the heat out of the room. It worked a treat, she could push the door as far as the doorstop and still enter the room without plunging the rest of us into hypothermia. It’s coming up summer here and with the el nino’s hot blustery winds the door slams constantly so it will be very useful then as well.
To make this, I cut out the image, quilted up some offcuts of scrap brightly coloured fabric and cut a shape to measure just slightly bigger that the image itself in a shape suitable to function well as a heavy bottomed door stop.
I also took the length of the base of the two outer pieces and worked out the diameter of the base using the pi equation. I stitched the front to back and filled it with batting in the top and a little cotton bag filled with uncooked rice to give it weight at the base. I then stitched on the base and appliquéd the image to the front. I did all the sewing by hand hence why I did things in this order
This was another version of a soft toy that I made without the side panel.
Lastly, I made a few colourful retro kitsch style pillows to soften the ‘great antiquarian explorer’ vibe our house seems to have…*shrug* no apologies, I love that look, but sometimes it can be a little much and is in need a little injection of modernity to bring it to balance.
I know they’re simple. But simple is sometimes all you need.
Pepperbox Couture 