Look! It's a Quilt!

If Abercrombie and Fitch were to sell quilts, this would be it. It's ratty and frayed. It has the dusky patina of ground-in dirt. It's irregular and uneven. Maybe it's not ripped up enough to meet those trendy A&F standards, but one has to draw the line somewhere.

The jeans circle quilt is done. Well, at least for now. Until I decide to do more stuff to it. But for now, done. Oddly, having it finished seems pretty anticlimactic. It's probably because I don't really have a place or a use for it, since I really just did it for the challenge of it. It took me so long to make (just over a year of on-again, off-again work), and so much physical effort, that I feel I have to hang onto it until I find the right place for it.


The Stats

The "Quilt from Hell", as I'd taken to calling it, has 221 jeans circles (from roughly 30 pairs of recycled adult jeans) and 221 ~5-inch squares cut from a tie-dyed recycled sheet (as well as 442 squares of polyester batting). It weighs 8 pounds according to my scale, but it feels like more.


I had made it up into three long sections, and then put the three sections together. That was one of the reasons making the quilt was so difficult; I had to physically muscle those huge and heavy sections around and through my regular home sewing machine (a Husqvarna Viking Emerald 118). In hindsight, I would have made nine smaller sections and put those together at the end.


It's Unique

The quilt is definitely unique. Besides the randomness of the recycled jeans circles in various shades, which are then laid out in a specific design, I also had the tie-dyed sheet. I had dyed it in a chevron pattern, then cut it all up and rearranged all the pieces. Someone I know wonders why people would take perfectly good fabric, cut it up, and sew it back together again. I just tell her to think of it as making paint from minerals and then smearing it on canvas--it's art. And in this case, it's taking something that isn't perfectly good (the worn out jeans) and putting them to good use.

Extra Special Style

My quilt has something that no Abercrombie and Fitch quilt would have: dog hair incorporated into its deepest recesses. Lacey thinks that's just perfect.





P.S.: I've managed to achieve my New Year's resolution! This may be a first!

Dressing for Success

Some friends of mine recently got married. When I got their invitation, the immediate thought (wail, more like) was "I haven't got a thing to wear!"

For the last several years I have pretty much always worn at least some tie-dye, usually a tie-dyed shirt and tie-dyed socks with blue jeans, or a tie-dyed "farmer's dress", or whatever. It's not a religious thing, but I like the bright colors, I have a lot of it, and it's comfortable. The last wedding I went to was a tie-dyed affair anyhow, so I was fine wearing one of my tie-dyed casual dresses (the one in my picture to the right with the bears-in-heart tapestry).

But this wedding was going to be a formal-to-semi-formal affair with dancing! My usual togs just wouldn't do. The groom-to-be and I joked about my having to pull out my formal tie-dye ("no, no, it only has to be semi-formal"). Pretty soon, it had to happen: I had to make myself a very fancy tie-dyed dress.

Designing

Designing the dress was fun. I had set myself a couple of constraints: the dress had to be tie-dyed, and it had to be silk (to lend it formality). Further, I would make it (almost) exclusively from silk charmeuse scarves from Dharma. With that decision, I could easily make prototypes of the dress. I also decided to make it a two-piece dress so it would be easier to get in and out of (and so I could wear the skirt with different tops later). I had been hankering to make myself a handkerchief-hem skirt for a while, too, so that became part of the design.

I started with paper towels and one of my favorite models, Barbie. Barbie is very cooperative for such endeavors--I have been making clothes for her since I was a kid. A little tape, some snips here and there, and soon we had a couple of prototypes (my daughter did one too).


I took the best prototype picture, massaged it a bit, and made what was essentially a coloring book page of it.


I borrowed my daughter's oil pastels and played with colors. So did my kids! I did the upper set.


Dyeing

I got a bunch of silk charmeuse scarves. The eight skirt pieces (two layers of four scarves each) were tied to make a diagonal stripe, while the others were done as diagonal stripes or X's. I also tied a sash.


I dyed them all using diluted turquoise, turquoise, electric blue, and strong navy and left them covered overnight.

Constructing

Once the scarves were dyed, washed, and dried, they made a glorious armful of colored silk. The white appeared on some scarves (but not all) where the dye hadn't penetrated. I had been aiming for a little white. The strong navy color came out purple (because I was dyeing silk instead of cotton), but fortunately purple is fine with me. After all, I always tell my students that tie-dye NEVER turns out exactly how you expect!


Now it was time to start putting them together. Easier said than done!

These are the eight scarves that will become the skirt.


I found information on "Making An 8-Point Skirt" on the web. I aligned each set of four scarves with the turquoise sections forming the diagonals of the squares as below, sewed each set together into a square, and put in the elastic waistband. I used 1.25-inch-wide elastic to give the waistband some strength. Those eight silk charmeuse 35" scarves make the skirt quite heavy!



Here is the skirt.
This is the top. The body of the top is essentially a tank top that is attached to the collar at the neck opening. The body is made of one 44" scarf that I cut in half diagonally. I used an existing tank top that I had as a pattern for the scarf pieces for the body.


The collar is one more 35" scarf set diagonally on the body. Since 35" was too big, I cut it in quarters and sewed it back together after taking part out of the middle (so it would preserve the turquoise sections). I essentially removed a thick "plus" ( + ) from the middle of the scarf. It has a V-neckline in the front and a more squared neckline in the back, and it can be worn either way.

Here you can see the blue broadcloth lining and the interfacing I used to give the collar layer a bit more stiffness and fullness. The body part is not lined, since it is very thick silk.


The Results

I finished the dress with only about five minutes to spare before I had to dress to go to the wedding! Here I am at the wedding in the dress.


The dress definitely didn't come out the way I expected it to, but I'm pretty pleased with it. I've worn it to three fancy occasions now (in less than a month!), and I expect to wear it a lot more.

I didn't expect the purple (short) sections to stick out the way they do--I think it's because I used such thick silk, so those sections don't have anywhere else to fall to. However, the weight of that heavy silk makes the skirt really flare out during turns and spins, which I love! I love ballroom dancing, especially swing and waltz, and this is definitely a great skirt for that. It's also got that gorgeous glossy silk glow that I like--it fills some of those Barbie doll dress fantasies I never quite grew out of.

I just wish the Barbie doll figure came with the dress!

Dog

Okay, here are the gratuitous dog pictures:

Ooh, she sees silk on the floor... "must go shed on it..."


"Isn't this turquoise just my color?"


Sorry, Lacey, the skirt is a little too big for you!

The Things People Wear

I've been talking with some friends lately about life in a fifth grade class. Even at age 10, several of the girls have already become slaves to fashion and the popularity contest. Specifically, they strongly prefer to wear T-shirts where the name of the brand is splashed across the front of the shirt: Abercrombie & Fitch, Aeropostale, Hollister, American Eagle Outfitter, and the like. Some of them even put down other people because the others get clothes at places like - gasp - Target! Parental explanations of how the girls are advertising those trendy brands by wearing logo shirts - and paying dearly for the privilege - fall on deaf ears.

My discussions got me to thinking about some anti-trend statements. I poked around on the web for a bit and found a place where you can make custom t-shirts or buy designs others have done. I created a couple of satirical t-shirt designs here on a website called Zazzle.



Okay, it's not tie-dye, but it was fun. The "American Sheep" shirt says "Follow the Flock" on the back, and the "Abercowmbie" shirt says "Follow the Herd" on the back.

My general anti-logo leanings are nothing new. One of my favorite pieces is a "Polo by Ralph Lauren" polo shirt that I found at Goodwill and then dyed tied up in kite string. It's fun to get an expensive trendy brand name shirt and make it your own.


You'll never find this shirt at your local mall! I can just see ol' Ralph cringing...