T Shirt Quilt: Phase 2

This is still very much a work in progress. Not sure if it's frustrating, or something I'm ok with. I can certainly see the goal though, and I don't feel it is too far off now. 

Back in 2020, after a wardrobe clean out that removed a number of Steve's humorous shirts from his drawer, I decided the best thing would be to save them for a quilt. Initially I had enough to just a single, couch quilt type thing, if I used some extra fabric to pad it out. I didn't love that idea (even though I'd spent a fair few hours on the cutting out of fabric I wouldn't end up using), so I just put it in a Work In Progress box in my sewing nook. 

Over the years, I added shirts to it as we wore out of them. Steve's, mine, even the girls. The box was getting quite full, so in May I pulled it down to do a stocktake of what I had collected. To my delight, I had actually been putting away more shirts than I remembered, and now had more than twice or three times as much as when I started. 

This made me pretty excited, because even though we had reclaimed our original quilt from Sophie (now that she had her own), it was looking pretty worn out; even ripped in a few places. I will likely salvage lots of it for repurposing, but I'm also looking forward to replacing it on our bed with a new quilt made with our fun shirts. 

I've put in the time to prep the stretchy shirt fabric with interfacing so it won't move around when I quilt it. It's also going to take a while to get the layout right, given I'll need to balance colours and themes (can't have too many positive dinosaurs or Disney references in one cluster now), but I'm actually really looking forward to it. 

Too bad I'm still in the midst of another WIP! Is it too much to hope that these school holidays will be super productive and I'll get both of these done? Probably.

Haori

I had this bolt of fabric in my draw for a number of years now - I thought three, but flicking back through the blog tells me I got it in April of 2022. It came from my friend David along with a cotton yukata bolt, and three wool kimono bolts (here, here and here). This one was a shorter length - not the 12 metres needed for a full garment, but probably half that - maybe six metres or so? It was perfect for a haori, which is a jacket worn with a kimono. 

Not only had I never made a haori before, but the fabric itself was intimidating because it was dyed with shibori techniques that left it with a texture. Obviously that's hard to explain here when you are unable to touch the fabric, but imagine it's bumpy, not smooth. Also, my friend David had given me a piece of silk for the lining that wasn't quite enough, so I needed to really think through how to make it work. 

And all the instructions I could find on the internet for a haori were for either an unlined one, or a men's style, which is actually different because the ladies version has extra spacers to allow for the larger obi that would fit underneath. 

All the problems! Should I be the one to provide instructions for the internet on how to do this? Clearly there is a gap there....

Focusing up though, I'm really trying to sew from my stash and use what I have. We were coming into winter and I figured it was now or never for this. I studied some of my exisiting haori, did a lot of thinking, over thinking and mental gymnastics figuring out how it would work and what sewing order to do and then I got to work. 

I ended up using a lighter pink cotton to line the sleeves, but everything else was with the fabrics I had. I sewed it on Sally, except for the final collar hand sewing. I think it took a week? 

And then I wore it. With my Black Yukata and a obi that I also made. I don't know why the photos of the fabric and then the final product on look like different colours. Even looking at these ones, they come out a lot more pink looking than it is. Maybe because the obi changes things? 

I've actually worn it a bunch more because it's so beautiful and fun. It feels very fancy - especially because I know the pattern on it comes from some seriously time consuming dying techniques. 

I realised after taking these photos that I'd made this entire outfit - including the undergarments that you can't see (and I never blogged about), which is pretty wild really.