Monday, June 3, 2013

Quilting, Cleaning, & Chicken Dancing

Alrighty then, here we go! So the beginning of this week started with the overwhelming feeling of claustrophobia. I looked around my room and decided that I wanted absolutely everything out. I just wanted it all gone. So, I started thoroughly cleaning out my room. I even pulled the huge pillow off my sphere chair and vacuumed it. (I'm certain this is probably not how the designers intended the pillow to be cleaned, but hey it worked) As I was trying to find a spot in my dresser for some of my High School tee-shirts, I couldn't help but be struck by the ridiculousness of the situation. Here I was trying to fit shirts into my dresser that I never wear. I couldn't justify throwing them away because of  how hard I had worked to earn some of them, so I decided to do something with them so I wouldn't have to keep them in my room. Then the thought struck me. I would turn them into a quilt!

So without stopping to think everything through, I turned on Titian AE (witch I was watching with my three little cousins- all of them boys and very much so into anything aliens) and started cutting up shirts. My little eight year old sister walked into the room and asked horror struck what I was doing to my shirts. "I'm fixing them, can't you tell?" I responded. She then proceeded to tell me that she was going to go tell mom. The next day was Sunday I spent a good hour on my computer looking up fabric stores around my house that had decent prices. I had made a quilt before so I was preparing myself mentally for the reality of the price of finishing the quilt. To my great surprise however a fabric store near my house was having a Memorial Day sale on fabric the next day for about $2.50 a yard. However they were closing early because it was Memorial Day and would be closing an hour after my shift ended at work. So I ran to get fabric the next day right after I got out of work and was out of the fabric store before they closed!

Thus my quilting adventure begins. I'm currently still cutting all the shirt pieces down to the same size, but I'm trying to get this done uber quick. Because I know that if I drag out the process too long, I'm going to get bored of it and most likely not finish it. So, a few points of advice for anyone who is reading this and decides they want to turn a few of their old shirts into a new blanket. (So, do as I say not as I have done)
  • wash & dry the shirts you want do use
  • Iron the shirts
  • cut the shirts in half. Along both of the side seams and along the sleeve

  • Then cut all the shirts into squares; they should all be the same length and height
  • you then have two options
    • you can sew all the pieces together and that will be the front of your quilt
    • Or you can do a checker board pattern with material sewn in-between all of the shirt fronts.
  • you then add the backing material with the batting material sandwiched in between.
  • if you have a quilting machine you can then use that to do the quilting, or you can do the quilting by hand, or add yarn ties in the quilt to hold the batting in place. (in my opinion none of these are actually quintessential so if you don't want to do them- hey it's your quilt)
  • Then TA-DA! You're all done!
So those are my two major goals for the month. I want to get rid of absolutely everything in my room that I am not currently using. I want my room to be so immaculately organized that the gods of order smile down upon me. I will also try to put aside my slothful funk I've been in and crank out an amazing quilt. Though it isn't entirely my fault that I haven't been able to get it done yet; granted most of it is just me procrastinating, but I have a good reason for part of it! It was graduation week for Little One (my little sister)!

I was honestly so worried about Madisen graduating that I started having my old nightmares about me not graduating. Maddie had been working part time, finishing High School, battling senioritis, completing four make-up packets of East Shore High School packets (darn 9th grade English), and going to all of the senior class activities. With two days left till she walked in the graduation ceremony and got her diploma she took her final test passed with an 86% (I think) and that was that. Madisen was now officially qualified to graduate! She had done it; all that was left to do was concentrating on not tripping while walking through the 'O' during the ceremony.

The day before she graduated, however, was Babes (this is my nickname for my baby sister Calee) Scera Park's elementary Dance Festival. For anyone who doesn't know what this is, let me explain. Where my family lives in Utah, all the elementary at the end of the school year put on a dance performance. Usually it is outside on a football field, but Calee's was held at the Orem Shell Theatre this year, and all of the audience was seated on white plastic lawn chairs on a raked grassy amphitheater. Grade by Grade all the kids come onto the stage and do a dance choreographed to a song and all the kids dance in a costume their teachers have picked. A common theme is music through the ages, where they start with 50's music and work their way up to contemporary music. In between the numbers they have a little pre-recorded audio track talking about what the school and the surrounding area were like during that time era. It is absolutely darling to watch and it's fun to listen to all the groovy music. If you look around you can see lots of the adults and even some of the kids happily singing along.

Well, at Babes elementary Dance Festival during one of the intermediate parts they had a small group of kids and teachers go up on the stage and invite the audience to do the chicken dance with them. I, being in the best of moods, figured what the hey! So up I popped! It was time to celebrate! Summer was here, Madisen was going to make it, and I was in a slightly malicious humor that day. Looking down I realized to my astonishment that Madisen had not followed my lead and stood up to dance also. Quite to the contrary, she had sunken deeper into her white lawn chair and seemed to be hoping no one noticed me. Well. She was going to celebrate and partake in the light-hearted happy atmosphere of the day, even if I had to forcibly evict her from her chair. So leaning down I pulled Maddie to her feet and....

(click the video for to see Madisen and I Chicken Dancing)

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