old t-shirts

hiatus

Have fun with your old t-shirts while I'm gone.

Friday Saturday pillows

I visited Jamie in NYC in October. We hit the Flea at Hansen Place. It is top notch thanks to vendors with impeccable style and a well-curated food court featuring kimchi hotdogs and a gelato stand that is willing to sell kiddie portions to anyone who asks. We never leave empty-handed. I bought two embroidered dish towels to craft into pillows. Jamie called me out on it over Christmas. The dish towels were still hanging in aforementioned project closet.

Yesterday was all pillow magic. Two embroidered towels, two pairs of secondhand linen pants (one really huge pair), two thrift store zippers and let's say a couple of hours later...

I love these embroideries. I imagine Sunday is a martini.

How to:

Here is a link to making pillows out of sweaters. You can skip all the felting business, as long as you don't plan to wash the end result in hot water. The premise is universal. I like to add zippers to my pillows for easy cleaning. It complicates the process and may or may not be worth it to you. Check out this tutorial for a basic zipper lesson. If you are shopping deliberately for something old to repurpose into a pillow- shop big. Gigantic pants don't cost more, which is crazy.

chenille bathrobe

Five years ago, the girl I nannied for had a chenille bathrobe that I liked enough to sketch a crude pattern of. Last year, as I was about to donate a chenille bedspread to the Salvation Army, I hung it up in my project closet instead. Last weekend I made a bathrobe. It has a giant hood and accommodating pockets. I plan to fashion a bunny out of white silk to inhabit the pocket indefinitely. His belly will be a zippered pouch to hold gum. Practical.

At any given moment, there is a 50/50 chance I'll be wearing this.

How to:

Any blanket or old sheet is large enough to make into a bathrobe. The pattern shown above is the exact pattern I used. Find an over-sized button-down shirt in your closet, or nab a man friend's shirt, and use its midsection width to find a waist measurement. Each side of the front will be half of this with a seam allowance of 1/2". You can determine the length of sleeves and final length using the button-down as a guide.

Hood is optional. I consider it a napping hood. Pockets are, as always, optional but recommended. I finished the robe by sewing two small strips of fabric as beltloops on either side of the waist and fashioning a long tie of the same material. Basically, each addition takes your original blanket or sheet one step away from toga and one step closer to bathrobe but you can stop wherever you like on the spectrum.

my skeleton closet

I have a closet dedicated to future projects. I entertain an ongoing dialogue with my older sister regarding my fear of the project. She claims she does not suffer from fear in her painting- just laziness. Having mused over this for months,

I am trying to get to the bottom of it.

Fear vs. laziness.

I'll be doing a project a week until my closet is empty. Most of them are harebrained and/or made out of secondhand pants.

Meanwhile, muse on this.

It is the work of Tamar Mogendorff.