tee-shirt monster, c.2011

On October 18th, I finally cut up the pile of old tee-shirts spanning from middle school through the present. I filled a 10 gallon plastic tub with the refuse and felt a sudden burning shame. Sure, the material was cotton, but to just throw them away...[this is what got me into trouble in the first place].

My plan was to make a tee-shirt quilt out of the screen prints. Okay, so that's still my plan with what to do with the screen print pictures. It's the rest of the tees that is the problem.

So I did a quick google search: "what to do with old teeshirts". and here are a few things. Besides a quilt. Which they will gladly do for a fee at... or you could ask me to do it for way less money.

Tee-shirt headband - CraftSnob
t-shirt-handbag - Craftbits
tee-shirt tug-a-toy - Craftbits
tee-shirt diaper - Natural Violet
t-shirt boa - Generation T
Poetic pocket square - Generation T
t-shirt placemats - Crafters Love Crafts
teeshirt doggy bed - The Eco Chic
napkins from old fabric - Greenworld 365
totebag - Instructables
toddler teeshirt dress - Grosgrain [my mother did this with rib knit tanks and seersucker one summer]
tee-shirt lappy case - MAKE
empire cut blouse - CutOutAndKeep
tee-shirt shrug also from CutOutAndKeep, and VERY cute. not something I'll be trying with any of the aforemention, re-purposed leftovers that I have.

None. Absolutely none of this research came to fruition. Not that I'm not glad to have it in the file folder, but I discovered that suddenly, actually finishing something was far more important to me than having projects laying around. Of which I have plenty.

Now that Lent is almost over, I think, in the spirit of Lenten disciplines, my "doing it for Lent" discipline will be to finish what I've started. No new projects. Completion. Salvaging what's left of something if the materials ran out. Which means I'll have to get creative, in some cases.But that is what it's all about.

minimalist materialsism

I'm proud of myself for not snagging the free bedside table in Shadyside. I was also on my bike, so it would have been a little ridiculous. It was pretty dated, looked to be from the 60/70's, but it had beautiful bones and potential...

Must stop. Else I hop in car and fetch a piece of furniture I have no space for. Decor wise, I seem to be going for a blonde wood, white trim - okay, the paint color was called "Silver Chalice". Looking around, I would say I could do a better job hiding the clutter. One thing at a time.

The To-Do pile keeps growing, and some things I will have to resign myself to not getting done this year. I can't paint indoors because I don't have a garage or the proper ventilation. So this puppy might have to wait for spring.

I bought it in May at a garage sale. I just replaced the original(?) painted wood knobs for white ceramic ones. A little on the lamesauce side, but you work with what you got sometimes.

I started looking up furniture stenciling, wondering if maybe I could incorporate the knobs into the design somehow, and I came across foiling. Oh dear. What is foiling? I asked self. How does it work?
Holographic-metalic-metal-rainbow? What?

One thing at a time, broke grad student, one thing at a time.