The RV Saga (ongoing) started in 2012, and what lead to its purchase is a story in itself. Let’s jump ahead to 2014, when I was living in it, alone, as my only home. I pretty-much considered myself homeless, but the 31 foot class C was a step up from the Ford Explorer I’d been sleeping in a few years prior to that. And I still had that car! So in fact, I really had two homes, which is how I see most things—the glass is half full. But for now, back to the RV.
At the time, my best source of income was royalties on my quilting books and the only chance I saw of increasing that was to produce and publish another book. While living in an RV.
Right.
Out of ideas, I fell back on a common request: “Please adapt your methods for making a T-shirt quilt!”
True confession time: I really don’t like t-shirt quilts. But Sarah was in possession of a box of shirts from a family member who was a marathon runner. And by ‘in possession’ I mean she’d had that box, moving from apartment to house to another house, for ten years. When I asked for them she practically levitated with glee. But as I examined the tees, I found every size emblem, from 3-inch, to 11-inch. Well, what was I going to do about that? And oh, they were all so worn. Stained, some almost threadbare. These were not the ‘fresh off the line’ stiff with starch brand new fabrics I was used to using. But hey, they made me think. Other quilters might need to deal with worn out fabrics, too, right?
I thought about Sarah’s stash of fabrics (which I may be more familiar with than she is) and asked about a homespun fabric quilt she’d made, hoping she had some scraps (which she normally doesn’t keep).
She did. Hurray.
I bought some fabric to match, for joining strips and binding, and started experimenting with the shirts. Since there’s already a book about that, I’ll only give you the short version here: stabilize shoddy shirts. My preferred stabilizer (I learned after much experimentation) is thick liquid starch.
But this isn’t a ‘make a quilt’ story, it’s about ‘adapting a 31-foot RV for quilt book production.” Heh.
I’d already torn apart the back bedroom (that’s another story) which originally was framed with twin beds and at that time, they were both intact. I slept in the bunk above the cab, made a pressing area out of one twin bed, and tore out the other, putting in a temporary table for my sewing machine. And boy was I thankful I was only quilting one block at a time—hurray for quilt-as-you-go.
I soaked fabrics and hung them to dry over the built-in dinette. I had my laptop on the dinette, where I wrote notes as I worked, and I staged every space I had to take the photos I needed for the book.
In all, I made three quilts and talked my pal Penny into making one also. The little book only has four quilts in it, and it’s been my best seller for a few years. I’m grateful I had the space, materials, and the gumption to follow through on that request. Eventually, I met a fun group of quilters who let me have a workshop with them at a gracious quilters’s spacious home. What a weekend! It was a blast. Use the [ t-shirt quilts ] tag to find the blog posts for more about that story, or look over the T-Shirt Quilt Book page, for photos of that “marathon” quilt.
