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!

Pillowcases become Little Girl Dresses

Well, these are the last two little girl dresses I made out of pillowcases and by now I had got the drill down fast. First I dyed the pillowcases and after drying cut the fabric. Cutting is simple as I'm just snipping off the top about 6 inches so I can make the ribbon that goes through the neckline casing. Then I cut out the armholes and use those pieces to make the top stitched pockets on the front of each dress. Since these were one seam pillowcases, I put that seam down the back and angle seamed the sides so the dress would flare a bit at the bottom. Then I stitched on embellishments -- in this case some silver ribbon made from a hem I'd hacked off another dress. The yellow lace was left over from a table cloth I'd cut up another time (as it was all torn up except for the lace bits). Then I do the neck casing, about an inch and a half and then, after making the ribbon for the casing, I thread it through and make a bow for the shoulder.
I think I've now got the drill down to about 45 minutes per dress (not including the time to dye and wash and dry). There's tons of tutorials on Pinterest and in various blogs if you need a pattern for making these, just search away!
While I'm sewing these, I stay praying for the girls that will hopefully receive these. I think about how the dress will go with their personality and fit them properly (so I put a size label on them--you can see the white tag hanging off the pocket).
So these were given to Church of the Redeemer in Bowie, MD This church has a ministry where they deliver these to a non-profit that then packs off the dresses and other items to orphanages in various parts of the world.   So once again, I was happy to re-use and recycle some pillow slips and put them to a good use.