Quilt Made During Pandemic: Recycled Shirts

Well, I pulled together a lap size quilt this past week from some old bits and bobs of fabric I'd been accumulating.  Most of the scraps were cut out pieces from old shirts from my husband and son. They are pretty hard on their shirts and once I can no longer sew the rips in the seams or shoulders or the tears that can't be patched, I cut up the shirts, open up the sleeves, etc.  Then I cut out 5 inch squares and start making a quilt.  I think this quilt is made from about five shirts, although I have scrap squares left over that I will turn into something else. Maybe a pillow....
One of the ways I have speeded up sewing quilt squares into triangle shapes was one I learned from a television show on sewing called "Sewing with Nancy" that I stumbled upon one day. Who says you can't learn from watching TV?
Anyway, to really make triangles fast the method is to get your two different squares sewn together fast by sewing two different squares together by putting the two right sides together and then stitching diagonally across from one corner to the other. Then you sew
a seam either side of that diagonal, about 1/8 inch away, so you end up with three seams running diagonally corner to corner.  Then you just snip through and across the middle seam, that is, the middle diagonal line of stitching, and hey presto, once you open it up, you have two squares made of two different triangles stitched together.  You just press them out then arrange them in rows, and then sew it up!  I try to make the whole thing as geometric as possible.  Usually, I bind the edge with strips of left over material sewn together to finish it.
I'm not the neatest sewciopath but over all, I'm usually pretty happy with how these come out.
And for the batting inside I used an old blanket piece, attached that to the patterned side of the quilt and then put on the backing (which was made up of discarded T-shirt material, so very soft and cottony) and then stitched it all together and turned it right side out (left about a foot unstitched so I could turn it right side out.  Then hand sewed that final foot and pressed the whole thing.  And eh voila, a lap quilt for keeping knees warm when curled up on the sofa watching tv or when reading in bed and when you don't or won't need a full size blankie. And it's all reuse and recycle or upcycle, and I feel virtuous that I didn't fill up the landfill!

Homeless in DC

I've been meaning to write something about being homeless in DC because it is easy for me to be so taken up with the wonder and wealth of the nation's capital and just not see these people who live right in front of us, on park benches, in alleys and doorways and hidden corners in and outside of buildings.  I saw this fellow in the photo sleeping about 2 p.m. in the afternoon in one of the mini parks alongside Pennsylvania Avenue NW. I am glad he had a quiet place to rest and sleep, his head lolling on his chest and his bag of personal stuff on the bench beside him. I've had arguments with people who insist this man should be picked up and housed or "put" somewhere, whereas I tend to think he has a right just to be there and sleep all day if he wants. But it's the messes and peculiarities of homeless people that wear us down, I think. It's the smell of pee in the subway elevators; the wrappers and food left around public benches; the gallon of vomit on the sidewalk; the drunken man lurching toward you; the inflamed eyes catching your eye to ask you for some spare change; the unintelligible words of the individual standing on the corner raving at the sky; the almost naked woman cursing you from under a dirty blanket; the young woman in the tent in the alley who screams at you to "get away, get away." I, and probably you, just don't want to "deal with it" on our way to an appointment with cleaner, more rationale, dressed, shoed and organized people in the world of our own business.  I have given some thought to how he or she got in their predicament and was told by one "homelessness expert" that addiction creates a lot of this, i.e., there is a steady spiral downward, of non-accumulation of assets, when a person bleeds their household budget dry to feed their habit and then the family unit "snaps" or the individual has exhausted their family who can't help anymore. I got to know one homeless lady whose story was that she refused all offers of public housing and lived on the streets -- and in shelters at night -- after squatting in her building when it was sold for redevelopment.  Another man, addicted to just about anything for years, had been thrown out by his family repeatedly, he said, and made his life on the street. My urge is to want to do something right away, and the best I can muster is sometimes some spare change, or a very brief conversation, or call the city for some cleanup, or send a check to a shelter. Or just pray for these people who remind us of how much we have and who we are.