The last couple of years I've ignored my collection of men's shirts for quilting. To be fair, I had a lot of deadline quilts in those years. The thing is, I love quilting with men's shirts! Doing Rhododendron Trail mystery quilt with men's shirts just reminded me of how much I enjoy that.
I found sewing up those butterfly blocks very boring, so I used them as leaders/enders while working on blocks for other quilts. I had to make a bunch of extra QST's for extra blocks and cornerstones, and if I had been rotary cutting them I would have given up. Since I was using my Studio cutter with a Go die, at least I got a lot cut at once, and I had no dog ears to trim, so it wasn't nearly as tedious as it could have been.
I've got enough blocks made to make a square quilt, which wasn't really my preference, but once I add sashing and a border (both of which I'm using yardage for) it will be large enough to fit a queen sized bed, and I often use square quilts for those. I'm going to use a goldish tan for the sashing, which will lighten up the quilt considerably, then I'll use more QST's for cornerstones. I've got two pieces of fabric in stash that would work for borders, and I'll make my final decision once the center is done.
Since I was digging through my shirt stash, I dug out every shirt section that had a pocket and I'm cutting all of those up. The whites and creams, plus the blues, I set aside to do the mystery quilt in Quiltmaker magazine. I've never attempted to do a quilt over such a long period of time before, BOM's aren't usually my thing, and this being every other month is even more unlike me, but I have so many blue shirts, I felt like this was a good option for that. I haven't started cutting for that yet, but with the clues so far apart, I'm sure I can catch up.
The other colors of shirts I'm cutting up for some specific quilts. All basic sizes, so if I have too many of a size for the quilt I'm making I can easily use it in another quilt. I'm cutting the largest pieces first, then cutting smaller sizes as the piece gets smaller. Since all of these pieces I'm cutting right now have pockets, the biggest piece I have been able to cut is a 6.5" square, and I've only got a few of those, and they aren't in this bin.
On the shirts that are predominantly one color, I'm only cutting up the sections with pockets, and anything small like cuffs or yokes. Sleeves, front sections without pockets, and backs are all staying intact for now. Multicolored shirts that are hard to use by color are all getting cut up, so that I'll have a bunch of quilts cut out ready to use as leader/ender projects, and all the shirt pieces that are left are the biggest, most versatile pieces. Cutting shirts into usable sizes is going to be a huge project that will likely last most of this year. I do have a couple things that are essential for cutting smaller things like this.
Besides my rotary cutter, my rotating Olfa mat and the Stripology Squared Mini ruler are both winners in my book. I'm not much on brands, I have several brands of mats I like, two of which are rotating. I do like the Olfa mat better than the rotating Fiskars one I have, but the Fiskars mat is smaller and better for keeping next to my sewing sewing machine when I'm doing frequent trimming. I really like slotted rulers, and I have three sizes of June Tailor slotted rulers, and three sizes of Stripology slotted rulers. This mini ruler from Stripology is hands down my favorite of the Stripology rulers. A lot of the slotted rulers are huge, which is great when you are cutting a lot of strips from yardage, but if you want a slotted ruler for scraps, this one is smaller and more easily moved around which you'll be doing a lot of if you are working with small scraps. I have a lot of brands of rotary cutters I like, but when using a slotted ruler, you want to use one with a manual safety guard. The ones that automatically close don't work well with slotted rulers in my experience. If I'm cutting a bunch of strips with a larger ruler, I prefer a 60mm blade, but for this smaller ruler, the 45mm is better.
I've still been doing some decluttering.
I've got the gluten free flours tamed and organized. I have some other flours I am not going to keep on hand anymore, so those are in a bin and I'm going to try to use those up soon. I also have nut flours but I keep those in the freezer. I made myself an expiration date for the bin, and whatever I haven't used by then is being tossed. All the packages are opened, so donating them isn't an option.
I went through FABRIC!!!
All of these fabrics went to my sister. Only the fabrics on top are quilting fabrics, everything else is either garment or home dec fabrics. I also passed on a bunch of notions, like all of my zippers. Everytime I think about garment making I put it off and put it off, and it's just time to accept the fact that's not something I want to do anymore. I can still make scrub tops, t shirt dresses, and pajama pants, all of which I don't mind making. I kept things like interfacing and elastic I'd need to make those. I had already given my sister all of my buttons, though I have some, because I save all the buttons off the men's shirts I use for quilting.
My plans last weekend fell through, so I had some extra sewing time. I am going to have company for part of this weekend. I need to go set up the pack and play for the littlest one to sleep in, then it's back to seeing what else I can get done before my company arrives tonight.
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