Talkin' Trash

I've been immersed in a ... new? continuing? ... project these past several days: making car trash bags (although I use them elsewhere too). The bags in their various stages are stashed have taken over all areas of my studio, as well as the dining room.

These 4 are done:

These nine (there's one hiding behind the Illinois bag) are waiting for their top trim and handle to be sewn on:

These 3 are waiting for basting along the top edge:

These 4 are waiting to have plastic pinned to their lining fabrics:

And these two piles consist of main fabrics paired with lining fabrics, all of them waiting to be cut to size:

This has been a great way to [air quotes] exorcise [/air quotes, because fabric really isn't evil] my stash of FQs and 1/2-yard novelty/WTF fabrics that have lingered for far too long. Many of the linings have been cut from the seemingly endless stash of tablecloths and overly-large napkins that I kept discovering at my parents' house two years ago (see that peachy fabric under the basketballs? A napkin. The pink below that? A tablecloth. Dark green, denim blue, dark pink linings in the various photos above? Tablecloths all.)

Some of the novelty fabrics came from the ever-evolving stash donated to the Community First! Quilters. Another member and I were going through the bins a couple of weeks ago; she'd pull out a weird fabric and wonder how it could possibly be used in a quilt, and I'd say, "I can make a litter bag out of it!" Problem solved. The four "done" bags and the Illinois bag came from that little stash-purging exercise. Although the bags I'm making will be used as a fund-raising effort for the Austin Harmony Chorus in a few weeks, whatever doesn't sell at our show will be given to Community First! Village for their pop-up market.

I have a large stash of plastic to line these bags, relics of my lab days.

They used to line huge cartons containing boxes of reagents used for blood tests. It was part of my job to unpack and store the contents of those huge cartons, and I saved all those enormous plastic bags for an entirely different, yard-related project (that compartment used to be packed with plastic rolls). There's been plenty to go around.

Last night I got quite a bit of extra cutting and sewing done, due to waiting for my son to let me know when to pick him up from the ER (which is literally within walking distance from our house, so I didn't feel bad bowing to his wish to be dropped off instead of waiting alongside for the duration)(he's fine). I woke this morning feeling well ahead of 'the game', excited about how much I'd accomplished last night and eager to get even more done this morning.

Then, as is my routine, I washed the dishes in the kitchen sink before settling down with my first cup of coffee. One of the first items tackled was a Pyrex storage bowl which, soapy and slick, slipped out of my grasp and shattered in/against the sink. I think in my effort to grab it, I probably assisted in its discorporation at the expense of my middle finger.

It was a relatively small cut, covered here by an old bandage the adhesive integrity of which is being assisted by a finger cot.

I keep thinking of the short story by Zenna Henderson ("The Last Step", in her collection "The Anything Box") in which a caravan of people are trying to get to a rendezvous point, think they've made terrific headway one day, only to be heart-breakingly curtailed the next. That book was my introduction to science fiction and I checked it out of the (Jr. High?) school library many, many times over those three years. I recently bought a copy for myself because the stories remained with me all these decades later and I wanted to revisit them whenever I wished. Best purchase ever.

Anyway, it was probably a good thing I was put 'on hold' for the day. My right elbow has been feeling the effects of too much rotary cutting--I couldn't even brush my teeth properly due to the elbow pain every time I tried to exert any pressure with my right hand. The brushing task was eventually finished, using my left hand with its boo-boo finger. Quite unsatisfactory!

Zoe, in the meantime, has made the best of her unsatisfactory options. With this hard, scrap-free prospect to choose from . . .

 

. . . she's found someplace else to get comfortable: the string bin.

 

 

Edit 11/14: This is the bag--right side of photo--to which my visitors are referring (thank you, Nann, for posting this picture which I would've sworn was from 2018 but was in fact just 3.75 short years ago):