SHEs Organized

I have finished up a pair of hot pads for the rainbow set and one white dish cloth this week.
One more dish cloth to do and 2 more hot pads all white after that.
Found this yarn while cleaning.

As mentioned in PWYC, I will be doing some easy sewing at the library on Saturday making soft little mats for cats at 2 animal shelters.

I cut all the polar fleece fabric over the holiday weekend. Well, all I'm going to cut. There was 1 piece that had seams sewn in it, and I didn't have a seam ripper with me to take out the stitches. I'm not going to mess with it this round because I lost count somewhere after cutting out 160 mats. That will be about 4 times as many as we'll be able to sew in 4 hours, unless a lot more people show up than have told me will come to help.

The mats are easy -- a piece of fleece cut roughly 12" X 30", fold in half and sew around all 4 sides. The project coordinator said the people who do the cat laundry found that if the folded side is not sewn, the mats will bunch and twist in the washer & dryer. Cats wouldn't care about a bunched-up mat, but flat mats are easier to store.

I will set this project aside now until Friday, when I'll go move furniture to put up the tables and chairs.

If doing a project like this is not too disruptive to library business, the boss will let us do more events like it. She wants the library to be used as a community center. A coworker has already mentioned that she'd like to have a knitting group meet there, too, to knit for charity.

I miss the times we used to have our guild met at the library. I have another hot pad done started the last one of this set then one more round dish cloth to do for this set. For my holiday prep. Sometimes I knit for clarity when I have some thing I need to pray about of process.

OK my first time trying to upload photos ... 211 cat mats!

Great job on the mats! I didn't expect to see them so colorful. (Just thinking here, do cats recognize colors?)

Those lucky kitties! Nice mats, and will be easy for the staff to launder and keep clean!

You guys are so good to do this for the shelter!


And LOL again at Harriet's meme up on top! BTW, I keep a piece of ribbon on my "good scissors" to remind me not to use them on paper. Of course, I'm using them to trim ribbon, not fabric.

Nice cat mats.

I am currently knitting on a cape using my handspun yarn.

Thanks for the comments, everyone. I was happy to see so many colorful fabrics, too -- not that cats care, but everyone is more cheerful sewing them and they will attract more notice from shoppers in the store.

The first time we did a project like this some years ago, we did the "proper" sewing technique of sewing right sides together, turn inside out, and topstitch around. That made the edges neater but also made them bulkier. This time the shelters said we didn't need to do that much work. Just fold in half right sides out, and sew around all 4 sides. I tried to be careful and make my edges match up, but the other volunteers were more interested in speed, and in the end being that neat really didn't matter. If the edges get too raggedy after several washings, we left wide enough seam allowances that they can be trimmed off with pinking shears.

I'm hoping that the next time we do a craft meeting in the library, my coworker will gather her knitting friends and teach me how they knit hats for charity. I can crochet but I've never really been successful at teaching myself to knit anything other than long scarves.