Projects part 1

For the second day in a row it is raining and pouring, which I am taking as a sign to put off my chores and catch up on the blog. So expect some posts in the next few days.

So, I mentioned back in May that I had a lot of projects lined up to do in the summer, which was true, and of course, I couldn't get through all of them before Seminary started again and my free time was commandeered by teenagers.  But as I also mentioned, not all of them waited until Seminary was over before moving up from the back burner.  This is one of those projects:

I got the idea from Pinterest (isn't that where all current craft ideas are born?) and after about 100 hours of work, it is finally finished, and well before I thought it would be. I was pretty sure I'd be latch hooking this baby until Christmas.

I bought a 36"x60" blank latch hook rug.  I cut t-shirts and sweatshirts into 1"x4" strips.  Lots of them.  That I got for $2 at a yard sale. I counted them -- over 10,000

I dyed them pink and gray and separated them into two very full diaper boxes (that fit 72 size 3 diapers).

The gray one looks more full because it has more sweatshirts in it, but really they were pretty much even.

Then I started filling them in, 31 in every square and after 7 thousand years, I was 1/4 of the way done.

I guess in my defense, I did take a vacation during this part, but still, this was definitely the longest section.  It took me awhile to figure out the fastest and best way to hook things on.

The rug was ridiculously intimidating at this point.

In order to motivate myself into not cutting the rug in half when I reached the halfway point and calling that good enough, I decided to checkerboard.

Halfway done!

And to be extra nice to myself, I left that bonus square for the last quarter.  By this point I learned that doing an entire row at a time was much faster than one square at a time, so things were speedier.  Also, I didn't have bare rug back scratching my knuckles and I had something nice to sit on.  

I learned to bind the rug before you start so you can machine stitch it on.  I had to hand sew mine on and it almost took longer than my patience could stand.  But as you can see, it makes a great wrestling mat.

After this huge project, you would think I learned my lesson, but I bought stuff for a rag rug before I even finished the binding on this.  I think I may have a crafting addiction . . .