Tuesday, February 24, 2015

A New Chapter Begins

Welcome to Saved by Kate, the companion blog to my Etsy shop, SavedbyKate!

After a few attempts to make this new endeavor fit within the confines of my old blog, I've decided that making a fresh start is really the proper way to launch things.  Let's start things off with an introduction.


I'm Katie.  I'm a mom, a yoga teacher, a knitter, and a sewist ('cause we all know if you say you're a sewer, people might get the wrong idea).   I love to knit and sew using upcycled and rescued fibers and fabrics, especially jeans and t-shirts. I also unravel ugly sweaters to harvest beautiful yarn.  


Here's my shop story:

The very beginnings of this Etsy shop go back to 2006.   There was a pile of ripped jeans, a set of bunk beds in need of summer quilts, and a feisty 13 year old who assured me that I could sew them.  That same 13 year old, placed an order with mom for her own denim quilt shortly thereafter.   
Since that time, quilts made of well loved jeans have made their way into the lives of family and friends for a variety of occasions. 
Those first denim quilts ignited my passion for working with upcycled materials.  I've added upcycled cotton t-shirts to my repertoire and also have begun experimenting with upholstery fabric samples.   
When I learned to knit a few years ago, my new skill and my love of upcycled materials converged.  I began unraveling ugly sweaters to harvest beautiful yarn.  Recently, I've been experimenting with spinning these unraveled yarns together to create a truly unique yarn. 
Where some might see rags, I have grown to see endless possibilities.  I hope you begin to see the possibilities as well.

Aside from what you see in the Etsy shop, I seem to be developing a specialty (or maybe its just a reputation) of making non-traditional memory quilts to order.  


Here's a peek at the most recent one I was working on, just prior to completing it.  I'm still not good at remembering to take pictures of my finished projects before sending them out into the world.  This quilt started its existence as a pile of clothing cut into random sized pieces.  




Let me know what you think.

No comments:

Post a Comment