My Mom started teaching me to sew when I was very young. I can’t say for sure, but I was well under 10. She had an old and slightly scary machine where you controlled the speed by pressing a lever to the right with your knee. But it would only make a low humming when you tired so you had to press harder almost pushing the lever as far over as it would go before the machine would roar to life very suddenly. You had to be quick to move your hand out of the way because several inches would be sewn in a blink and your fingers would move closer to the needle in just a moment. After the first loud jump you quickly took the pressure off the lever and could continue at a normal pace.
She would make clothes for us and my Dad wouldn’t believe they were hand made. He would pull the back of our collars away looking for tags when she left the room.
I lost interest in cloth purses and padded baby quilts quickly, taking up drawing instead. But I never forgot how to hand stitch even though I was too young to remember learning how to do it.
Recently, I decided out of the blue to cut up all my old cloth backgrounds I used for still lives and make a quilt from them. I don’t have a machine, so it’s all done by hand. After about 3 weeks I got spasms in my wrists and have had to take a long break. Brian is in love with the quilt so far. Because of the material I had it’s turned into some kind of slightly Victorian looking recreation. Here is the beginning of it:
And somewhat larger:
When it’s finished I plan to take much better photos of it because the lighting does not to the material justice. As you can see, there is no pattern or logic to the patches. I hope to finish it within the year. It’s going to be the size of a queen sheet.
I totally want to do something like this with all my old band t-shirts that don’t fit or are too worn to wear anymore.
Tshirt material can be really hard to work with so I don’t recommend doing it by hand. I could do it for you when I get a machine though.
That would be pretty awesome! I originally wanted it as like a quilt for my bed, but then realized I’d still be fucking up the old shirts when I needed to wash it. I’m trying to figure out where I could use something like that instead.
If you don’t want them to become more distressed you might consider a wall piece, where you hang the quilt rather than use it.