Fall Cleaning...Step 1

Fall is here...I feel it in the crisp mornings, the tomatoes deciding to all turn red at the same time (all the better for me to can you my pretties), the desire to wear sweaters...and the desire to purge the house.  After several weeks of looking at the massive pile of "to iron" clothes, I broke down and spent the evening ironing while the hubby read books and told me interesting tidbits about them to make the dreaded task go quicker.  As I ironed, he also would look up and say, "That doesn't fit." or "Don't you see the stain on that one?" or the "Those cuffs are horrible!"  These I put aside for another purpose.  We then went through each of our clossets and drawers and purged further.  Then we made piles of all the clothes we had purged.  Two grocery bags went to St. Vincent DePaul's.  The ones that were too stained, ripped, or otherwise unable to be given away, went to the scrapyard.  I cut all the useable fabric out of the various shirts and pants to be used in later projects.  I also had a pillow that had bust it's seam.  This pillow got a bizarre makeover.



Before the project



First I took the shirt and cut off the arms.  I left on the seams for the arms thinking it would help keep the integrity of the fabric.  Then I turned the shirt wrong side out and sewed up the arm holes.



Arms sewn up



Then I used a different part of fabric (the sleve of hubby's shirt) and sewed it into the neck of the shirt since it was a v-neck and I couldn't just sew up the neck hole.

Cut to fit.

Then  I put the pillow in the new sack and sewed it up.  Others may have used buttons or a zipper to make it removable, I just wanted to get the job done.  It looks weird, but as W. said, "It's like mommy is on the couch snuggling me anytime I want."

The finished product

From the fabric I also have a few more projects in mind...I may just share with you.

A future...