What?

You promised.

I know. I did. I promised myself not to buy anymore shirts.

But I’m a member of this amazing freecycle “zero waste” group here in our town and a couple of weeks ago a lady had a couple of bags of clothes.

She also separately advertised a pile of men’s XL and XXL mostly long sleeved button down shirts.

No one wanted them. (!!!)

I wrote on the ad that if no one else wanted them to actually “wear” then I could use then to make something with. (I guess I fell off the wagon, huh - big time)?

Well, she wrote me and said, “Prosze bardzo”, which in this context means, “Great..come and get them”.

When I found her house and she brought them out to me, I told her that I like to use them for “patchwork”.

She kind of looked quizzically at me, but just nodded and said something to the effect of, “That’s great - I just want someone to be able to use them.”

And yes, I’ll be honest, when I put that unopened trash bag of goodies into the back of the van, my heart kind of give a leap - not even having opened it - even though I had seen a picture on the Facebook group, I hadn’t looked very closely. I was excited! It was like “treasure”!

Sigh.

I think I’ve got a problem. (I’m not sure I want to do anything about it, though!)

When I got home, I opened it in order to examine these things more closely. I found 8 shirts. Six of them were grays/blacks and white. One was light green and one was burgundy/navy blue striped.

They weren’t all all cotton. One of the gray ones was this super cool looking, but bit thick, slippery, shiny fabric. Two of them were heavier weight - a sort of almost corduroy (but not corduory - but maybe it is super fine wale corduroy). I set them all to the side to think while I finished up several other things.

A few days ago I went ahead and cut them up when I had a few minutes of free time. So there they sat on my table, waiting for inspiration. Up close the shirts weren’t that exciting. The white and black ones were all cotton and I thought probably the thicker ones were as well. The others were not - but all were wovens - no knits.

So, finally having finished all the charity quilts(!), I went ahead and quilted one of my large tops, but I kind of wanted to squeeze in a small project - a sort of nonthinking one.

I had just recently changed the header on the Facebook group to my framed 9 patch, Autumn Glory, and it got such a positive reception, I actually thought that maybe I could make up a small one of those out of these shirts. I had thought I would use all of them. All I wondered was how to make it look right.

At first I thought I’d use the blacks, grays and white in the middle and use the light green as the first border and then a piano key border out of the rest. I figured I could leave out the burgundy and navy shirt. Then I thought I’d try to cut on the burgundy and use only the wide burgundy stripe from the shirt as it would look nice with the grays, black and white and leave off the mint green.

So I began the framed 9 patches. It was not so easy to work with some of these fabrics.

But I was making this one small - only a 4x5 layout.

And so I did.

I didn’t bother to show you the top first and then later the finished quilt. Why? Well, I actually finished the top and went ahead and sandwiched and quilted, bound and washed it all the same day. I had made most of the blocks the day before. It was small anyway, so not really deserving of a special blog post all by itself. :) LOL

I opted to leave out the mint green and burgundy/navy altogether. I had enough from these 6 shirts to make a decent sized top. I did go to my upcycleds shelf and found a piece of fine fabric from a duvet cover that looked nice with it and used it as my backing.

I pulled out leftover batting pieces from my recent frenzy of charity quilting and used them (3 different pieces of poly batting).

I knew I wanted to quilt closely in order to make sure it all holds together well and I wanted to de-emphasize the straight lines since the slippery fabrics made it hard to keep the straight lines straight. I was afraid simple straight line quilting might actually look worse if I couldn’t quite get that satiny beautiful gray slippery fabric to cooperate with me. I starched most of it pretty heavily - but I did not add interfacing. I really was too impatient for that - didn’t want to go to the store.

So I did a pretty tight loop de loop quilting.

So what am I going to do with this quilt?

I believe that in the next day or two I’m going to drive back over to the lady who gave me the shirts and give it to her if she wants it. She said that the shirts were all her father’s. I asked her if her father was still alive (I told her I know, I know…it is a strange question.) She said, “Yes - they had just been sitting in his dresser.” I said, “Ok”. and that was all. I thought at that time that I could try to make her something easy from it. She’s young - probably around 30 and I think she has a child.

So, I’m planning on doing this total “random act of kindness”. I really should do it without telling anyone - But here in Poland that is hard to do - at least something like this. (Plus, I needed a blog post!)

Houses here have fences all around their yards and you have to call ahead of time or at least ring their doorbell which is on their gate - to be able to see them. But it is random since I don’t really know this lady - just her name and where she lives since I went and got the shirts from her.

Of course, I’m kind of nervous about that part. Of course!!! That’s far harder than making a quilt! She’s going to think I’m so weird!

I’ve not written her yet to find out if she even wants it. I wanted to get this thing featured first - I just got it out of the washing machine last night so it has been drying for 24 hours - it’s basically dry.

So there you are - I’m crazy. I know I am.

Oh…and I know the colors aren’t properly and evenly distributed. I had laid it out carefully and then when I went to sew it together, I mixed up a couple of pieces and just left them as they were and then just tried arranging strips. So much for my design wall (floor). I mean, really. Why bother when you get to the sewing machine and turn around a couple of blocks?

It’s my fault. I accept the blame 100%. Obviously.

The only reason I went ahead with it was because I knew I was going to attempt to give it to the lady who gave me the shirts - and she obviously doesn’t sew. Hopefully she will be so overwhelmed with the whole IDEA of such a thing that she won’t think about the uneven placement of the blocks.

I figure anything at all will be fine - so I didn’t worry about perfection - even in the layout.

I didn’t need to do this. I don’t even know why I am doing it. I guess I know I don’t need these shirts - well, I’ll keep the mint green and add it to my upcycled greens boxes which I am hoping to tackle in 2020. I also think I wanted to show a young (er) person what can be done with clothing besides wearing them.

I was listening to a YouTube video recently and a vlogger made the offhand comment that “no one does that anymore” referring to using the fabric from clothing for something else.

I’ll let you know what happens. I’m not expecting a huge reaction - just a very surprised person. People here are somewhat reserved. I’m hoping she’ll take it! If not…well…it’s great for a man but because it is a smaller size, I’ll not put it in the charity quilts - so who knows?

It’s only a lap size, though - not a bed.

I’ll let you know what happens! I’m kind of nervous about it - the easy part is over (making the quilt) - the hard part remains (taking it to the lady).

Oh… I did go ahead and write up the pattern for Autumn Glory. It’s on the free patterns page.

Have a great day wherever you are reading this!

Addendum:

Had you been wondering what happened?

Thanks for wondering!

On Wednesday (Dec. 5) I wrote her right after lunch and asked if I could come over and show her what I had made with the shirts.

She told me that she wasn’t going to be home til the next day. I made an appointment for 10 am the next day.

Here’s what happened:

On Thursday (Dec. 6) I wrote this on the Facebook group:

I gave it away.

I wrote her yesterday about showing her what I did with the shirts. I didn't want to write her too much or she would just say it would be easiest if you just sent pictures. Then I would have been in a pickle.

This morning (we are 6 hours ahead of EST in the USA), I met with her and showed her the quilt. She thought it was "slicznie" (beautiful). She even noticed that I used the pockets in the corners.

I then told her that I wanted her to have it.

She was touched. She even gave me a hug and a kiss as a gesture of gratitude. When I suggested that she could give it to one of her kids, she hugged the quilt to her, and said, "It's mine!" Maybe I saw a glint of wet in her eyes - not sure.

Anyway...I needed to go to the grocery store and then came home. I then noticed I had another message from her.

She said that she had never gotten such such a wonderful present and "Thank you again!"

Let me translate her exact message: “I wanted to say one more time a sincere thank you. I’ve never received such a wonderful present! Thank you very much!”

A person can't ask for more than that!

Thank you for all your moral support. I think I have made a new friend in our town!

Be sure to check out what my sis has for you in the store!