Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Adding Weight (or How to use old Rags)

Sometime in the 70's, the t-shirt started to become the clothing of choice for a generation.  Not the stark white t-shirts of the 50's greasers, but with color, decorations, silk screening, and sayings.  I've collected hundreds of t-shirts over the course of my life, and some of my kids have already surpassed that total in college.  What used to be a sign of disobedience became common, even mainstream.  Now, you can get fancy t-shirts that cost more than a dress shirt!

These t-shirts are actually mementos of our lives and throwing them away is a bit disrespectful.  We use some as rags, but there are only so many rags that we can use.  So Gail came up with the idea of making a quilt out of old t-shirts as a reminder of the places we went and the things we did.  A couple of my daughters bought into the project and have made a number of quilts over the years.  Unfortunately, they take more time than Gail has, so we have about 4 boxes of t-shirts in the closet ready for quilting, but that's a story for another day. 

What does this have to do with backpacking?  Well, when one makes a t-shirt quilt, one cuts out the interesting part of the shirt and 75% of it is disposed of.  We had a couple of big bags of old t-shirt remnants waiting to find someplace where we could recycle rags in the area.  Alas, after a couple of years in the garage, I found a wonderful use for them.  Tune in tomorrow.

No comments:

Post a Comment