On Sewing: Stashbusting

While I may not have completed Kyle’s knitted birthday present on time, I did sew him something as well which I did manage to get done by his birthday. I had been waiting to share these gifts here until I had everything finished so I could present them tidily in one post, but it is nearly six months later and at this point the cat is very well out of the bag. Or in this case, the hippo is out of the creek.

This was a fun project to work on and I managed to make it entirely out of materials I already had sitting around. The pattern is Heather Hippo by Funky Friends Factory which I bought on a whim several years ago while wandering a fabric shop, and it was nice to think back and remember some of the projects that produced the scraps that were ultimately used here. I learned to sew at the beginning of the pandemic right around the time when there was a huge demand for face masks. All of the crafters took to their sewing machines and Kyle and I, for several weeks, spent our evenings sitting side by side cranking out hundreds of masks. We made sure our families and friends were well stocked, but also donated masks to medical clinics and nursing homes. It was such a strange time when cotton fabric and elastic were such a scarcity, it felt like winning the lottery when we were able to get our hands on more material. We have a big ziploc bag of scraps leftover from our mask-making days and I’ve always had in mind that one day I am going to make a pandemic quilt using all of these scraps as a memory and testament to everyone’s strength and resilience back in the early months of 2020. In the meantime, however, I was able to raid that stash of scraps and come up with pieces of some of Kyle’s favorite fabrics that he has used over the years. The head of this hippo features some cute sloths – one of Kyle’s favorite animals – that I was able to rescue from the bin.

My memory is terrible, so Kyle will have to correct me where I am wrong, but the ears, bottoms of the feet, and the tail are scraps of a floral fabric that I believe he had used to make hot pads or bowl cozies at one point. In looking back at old projects, I also used it as the binding on oven mitts I made as a gift for my mom.

I don’t exactly remember where the otter fabric that I used for the underbelly came from, but I do know that Kyle loves otters and years ago I knitted him a pillow with an otter on it, so this was a nice tie-in. Was it maybe from pillow cases for the kids? Pajamas? More bowl cozies? I know it came from Kyle’s stash originally. And lastly the fabric for the main body is from Kyle’s very first sewing project. He signed up for a sewing class at the local fabric shop when we lived in Minnesota and his first project was a pair of pajama pants. He worked so diligently on those pants every week in class and at home between classes, but I think he also probably encountered every obstacle possible during that project. He was so unhappy with the finished product, despite loving the fabric, that he promptly threw the entire thing in the garbage! This must have been back in 2018 or 2019. I promptly, and secretly, scooped it out of the trash when he wasn’t looking and vowed to repurpose the fabric to make something for him. To wrap it all up, I used some black tourmaline beads for the eyes from a bracelet of mine that had broken, and I stuffed the whole things with leftover Tunis wool that I processed last year. A lot of past projects went into making this one possible, and it was so fun to see it all come together. I know Kyle enjoyed opening it and seeing all of the old scraps of fabric from the stash put together into this new project.

On the subject of stash, I’ve had in mind lately that I want to have a go at making a small rug that is a really popular project all over tiktok and instagram right now. It uses a “jelly roll”, which is a collection of pre-cut fabric strips, sewn into one long binding strip (along with quilt batting) and then essentially used as cording or rope to sew into a rug. I vaguely remembered buying a jelly roll at one point when I first started sewing and sure enough, at the very bottom of my fabric stash, I unearthed this beautiful gradient collection that will make a perfect rug. I’m looking forward to seeing how it comes out once I have time to sit down at the sewing machine and work on a project that doesn’t involve hemming handwoven towels.

But I do think before I start another new sewing project, I really need to return to another long-forgotten project of my past. I’ve talked about this one here before, but I still haven’t made any progress towards the finish line.

This is what I have, for many years now, referred to as my “Winter Quilt.” I made this quilt top back in June of 2020. It was the second quilt I ever made. And every fall since 2020 I have told myself I would finish it in time for winter. Well I am here to inform you of two things: 1) I still haven’t made any progress toward that goal, and 2) this is my annual statement that I am going to finish this quilt in time for winter! It’s imperfect, and lovely, and the fabric has a faint metallic sparkle to it in the prints. I have a wool batting ready to go so it will be extra warm, I pieced the backing together with leftover fabric from the front, I have my binding strips all cut and ready to go. There are a few critical decisions I still need to make which I think are part of my delay – I have no idea how I want to quilt this. Follow the lines of the shapes? Use an allover meandering pattern? Do a combination of both? And I can’t decide what color thread I want to use for the quilting. Black would look good in the darker sections, but really stand out on the lighter areas. Or I could use white, but that would be the opposite problem. I could go somewhere in the middle and use a gray and call it good enough, maybe that’s what I’ll do. After all, a finished quilt is better than a perfect one, and this one is already far from perfect. It is past time to see this project to the finish line, so I hope to be able to share an update on this project before our first fire in the woodstove. Stay tuned!