My New Project (and exciting news!)

What the heck am I doing? I'm making a garment! And what's that I'm using for fabric? T-shirts! I got my Project Runway on and designed a vest. I started with a commercial pattern, but by the time I finished tweaking it I think I can call it an original pattern.

I bought the t-shirts at the local thrift store. I was lucky to find five blue shirts that matched and were actually NEW! I bought various white t-shirts for the lining. I used 10 t-shirts that cost 50 cents apiece. $5.00 total!

Are you familiar with Natalie Chanin's work?  She lives in north Alabama and uses t-shirts or cotton jersey by-the-yard to make garments. Then she stencils fabric paint on the surface of a garment, stitches around the paint, and cuts out the outer layer. Her garments are absolutely amazing! So I decided to try my hand at it.

I traced one of her stencil designs from one of her books onto poster board.

Then I used fabric paint to stencil the pattern all over the vest. (Looks gray here, but you can see below that it's actually blue.)  After the paint dried and cured overnight, I heat set it. Then I attached the white t-shirt lining.

Finally I'm to the fun part! I stitch around each leaf (big stitches) with white button thread.

And then I cut out the center. One leaf down, TONS to go! This will be a long term project, since I need to get back to quilting! But I do hope I finish it before Houston Quilt Market - it would be nice to wear it there.

And now for the news:
I found out last night that my hexie quilt, Mickey Blue Eyes, came in First Place in the Pieced Category of the Accuquilt Go! Have Fun Challenge in Grand Rapids! So THRILLED!