Mad about Mats

So here are a couple of the recycled T-shirt mats I've been working on. I tried knitting a mat and was not happy with the way it turned out. The strips are of varying widths and thicknesses so the different stripes in the knitted mat made for very uneven knitting gauges and an uneven appearance. So I ripped it all out and crocheted these.

Here's the oval one. Shades of pink, coral white and light blue. Its a little flippy around the edges but I think thats just the nature of the beast. Once its done and I give it a good steam press I think it should relax a little. I've got a ways to go on this one. I envision a nice broad one next to my shower stall door. Or, I'll sell it--whatever!

Here's a close-up of my technique. I haven't had much practice with crocheting but I think it looks OK. I like how the ends that I've knotted together poke out here and there.

Here's the little round mat I already finished. The constantly expanding circumference gave me some trouble as I had to continually add stitches so that it would lay more or less flat.

It feels good on the feet. Not soft and plush, mind you. But knobby, bumpy and absorbent. And of course, being T-shirts from another life, eminently washable.


And here's a shout out to my homies who have contributed dead shirts to the cause: Thanks Fiona, Helga and Valerie! Couldn't do it without your generous donations!

Recycle mania

Hi everyone--I've got two new projects cooking so I need to fill you in! The first is an offshoot of my T-shirt textile postcards. I'll be selling my postcards in a fun shop down in Winter Park soon, so I was gearing up to make enough for the order. The shop is Earth Inspired Living and it is just perfect for my T-shirt postcards. Or my postcards are perfect for the shop. Hopefully they will sell well and I'll get lots of future orders for more cards. I'm pretty excited to enter the world of retail.

Sooooo....I got to looking at all of the leftover T-shirt material after I had cut out the images for the cards and thought: "hmmmmm, hate to throw all of that away". So I cut the remaining shirt material into continuous inch (or so) wide strips and knotted them together as you can see here. Looks suspiciously like a ball of yarn, doesn't it? Did you know that I'm a big knitter from way back? Haven't done any knitting lately--we just don't need wool socks and sweaters here in Florida so its pretty pointless.  So I dug out my needles and started playing around. A little experimenting with knitting and crocheting and I hit upon the right procedure and guage. I'm thinking: bathmats, trivits, coasters, small rugs. Should be fun!  I'll post more pictures soon, stay tuned!

Quick update

 Just a quickie post to stay in touch and let you all know that while I have been working that pesky day job I have also been trying really hard to keep up with my projects. Here's two solid rows of the stencil repeat. At this point I'm not really sure how many rows I'll end up doing. At least one more, maybe two?? I'm just not sure.

Here's a close-up of the little recycled quilt. Its all pinned now and ready for quilting on the machine. Still trying to decide about the quilting pattern. Organic free form curves doesn't seem to go with the whole feel of this piece. Straight line sewing and contour outlines seem most likely.  No rush on this now--I missed the entry deadline for the show I was thinking about. Oh well, that's happened before--its no biggie. I figure I get a different sort of piece in my inventory, one that I wouldn't have ordinarily have tried if hadn't been for the entry requirements.

Well, that's it for tonight. I have some more postcards in the works and you'll be seeing those here really soon too.