rickrackpaddywack

My sister-in-law Diana recently wrote extolling the virtues of T-shirt yarn as ties for masks: “… there is a link to ‘T-Shirt yarn’ I used that and made the ‘tie’ material.   It’s an amazing thing and since we have bins of t-shirts, I’m considering a rug from this stuff!   Amazing.   A little confusing, but if you follow directions you’ll get it and I’m sure you’ll be amazed as well.” I wrote back to Di, saying   Stella and I are pretty sure that we invented t-shirt yarn in the 1970’s.   I think that Stella and I did discover it independently with directions from no one.   It was a natural discovery…. In making sock toys or knit fabric items sometimes little long scraps are left over. Pull on them and you notice the edges curl… making a cool self hemming string. Eventually we figured out that you could cut a continuous cord if you spiraled your way up the body of a t shirt. Eureka!!! The discovery of t-shirt yarn.     I AM certa...

LA 4. 25.2020 An uneasy color combination. That’s always my response to this scarf that was made into a dress. I loved the way it draped, how perfectly the scarf lines suggested where the neckline fell, the silky feel when you put it on. But the colors were not mine. The dress was sort of like a bad boyfriend, a lot of qualities you loved, some that you hated…. Still you kept him anyway. This dress I still have lurking in my costume box. This dress was one of many things from our Rag Sister phase. Stella and I sewed for consignment shops in Berkeley. Later we sewed for our Rags Book project. Were the scarf dresses our invention? I think so. Maybe a variation with on the poncho dress we created for sale in Seventeen Magazine. Stella, I think made this one. How we managed to piece together this flimsy fabric with tiny portable sewing machines is a mystery. But a credit to our hunting and gathering skills in the thrift stores and our ingenuity at “making a litt...