Recycling and Playing

I've been a bit grumpy lately and I was trying to figure out why. I think that I haven't been getting enough playtime in my sewing room. So I have embarked on a new attitude adjustment program. I am going to take some advice I have read in a magazine and try to create one piece of art a week. In reality, it will probably be one piece of art every other week. That doesn't matter to me though. I figure that if I get to work on my "art" piece at least 15 minutes every day, I have been successful in my plan.

I put art in quotation marks because I'm not trying to create a masterpiece every week. My goal is to practice my design, color and composition skills along with practicing and trying out new techniques and materials. I started yesterday and this is what I've got going on so far.


The horizontal stripes were cut from one of my husbands old shirts that he no longer wants. The gold vertical stripe is from some fabric my mom gave me recently. I have no idea what the fabric content is, but it's not cotton. It is has some gold metallic threads in it and it frays easily. I am encouraging it to fray. I used some of the decorative stitches on my machine to sew down the horizontal stripes. On the middle one I even used two threads threaded through one needle on my machine. I'll take a detail shot of that later. I have learned that it is difficult to go around corners when doing a decorative stitch. I need more practice with that. I also think I should have cut the stripes from the shirt differently, leaving out the cream lines and circles in between the colored stripes - next time. I am thinking that I will do a series of these using this shirt.

Here's a picture of the shirt.