Brainwashed by Alabama Chanin

In the interest of sustainability (I feel very smart using that word), Natalie Chanin cuts up her leftover cotton into strips that you pull, thus making them curl up into rope-like, uh, ropes. She says someone in her family used these to move furniture! So I had some leftover white fabric from that shirt, and I thought, what the hell, let's make some ropes. So I did.


They're in a bag in the laundry room now, waiting to be used as bows on gifts, or tourniquets, or whatever. (I feel very green today.) Oh, and this is the other cotton jersey rayon fabric I have (sorry for burning your eyes with that pink), but I'm not ready to sacrifice it for sizing the corset, so...


I did another Alabama Chanin thing and deconstructed some T-shirts. Now I was saving these to try making some panties, but that's never gonna happen, so I got real about it. Her first book tells you how to cut off the ribbing, sleeves, etc. By the way, if you've never sewn a day in your life, you could pick up that book and start sewing. She even has diagrams of what it looks like if you cut something out on the fold of the fabric - I believe the words "mirror image" were used - I laughed derisively that someone wouldn't know that (then I felt mean).


And today, since I had an hour between clinic patients and a medical student lecture, I ran to Michael's and fully committed to dying those T-shirts, cutting out a stencil, painting that stencil onto that fabric, and embroidering it!


Now that blue plastic was the only stencil type thing they had that was blank, but AC sells pennant felt on their website if you're serious about it. Or you can buy the dadgum stencil already cut out, but it costs upwards of $80, I believe. We'll see what happens...I was thinking of ordering the "kit" with the fabric already stenciled and I just have to sew it, but that seems like selling out to me. Bianca at Thanks! I made them! has inspired me to do all of this myself (she just doesn't know it, so now I feel like a stalker).