Getting a 'Real Job', Upcycling, and other Sporting Adventures

 October 2024

So...I've had a bit of a hiatus from my crafting endeavours in the last few months. Having given up my 'day job' in a stressful healthcare role at the end of 2023 I had 6 months of retirement, and I was working away on my sewing, and building my website, and going to markets and generally living my best crafting life. Then, in June, I was offered a part time position in my old profession but in a much better work environment than I'd had before, and I was kind of missing the patient interaction, so I decided to step back in. That was 3 months ago and I'm finding the new environment has given me a renewed enthusiasm for the work.

At the same time I was hard at work training for my other passion which is Surf Sports. I had the privilege of being in a team of Masters Women competing at the Surf Lifesaving World Championships on the Gold Coast at the end of August, so we were training 6 or 7 days a week. And it paid off! I'm not one to brag, but we did pretty well and brought home quite a few medals between us. And that, together with organising an endurance event at my Surf Club at the end of September meant that something had to give, so my sewing machine got a little bit of a rest for a few months.

But not completely! I did still manage to potter away at a few projects which I thought I might share with you.

I have a friend who is a very talented op-shopper and we do a bit of ocean swimming now and again. She has these cool slouchy pants that she wears after swimming and she told me she got them in an op-shop and they had been upcycled from a chenille bedspread. ' You could make some ' she said. And so began the quest for a suitable bedspread. It took a while, it seems they are hard to come by, but then a few came along at once...

Then we got onto the subject of blanket coats, they're having a bit of a moment right now. So one day I came home to find a bag from the op shop on my doorstep full of lovely old pure woolen blankets. It just so happened that around this time it was my friend's birthday so I decided to make her a coat from one of the blankets. I used a Burda pattern # 7700 with a few adjustments so that I could keep the original blanket binding as the hem on the bottom. And it has pockets! Here is the result, as modelled by my friend and her cat Billie. I love how the colours match the sunrise.

My friend is now on a one woman mission to save all the blankets.