I spent most of the day Friday sorting through my craft “corner,” aka craft disaster zone. I had lost the ability to find anything I needed and the mess had pretty much taken over the entire dining area. Ben and I were eating all our meals in front of the computer. Not cool.

I think I’ve finally gotten it to the point where I can work on things without making such a mess that clean-up takes more time than crafting.

This is the first fruit of my new space, reconstructed from an old shrug and two shirts. The remaining pieces of the shirts will be seen in future projects.

If you’re inspired to start cutting up and re-combining your old clothes, I highly recommend these two books:

• Generation T: 108 ways to transform a T-shirt by Megan Nicolay — Easy and creative re-crafting ideas to make shirts, skirts, accessories or even a wedding dress out of t-shirts. I made a few of her projects over the summer, but I don’t think I even took pictures. Need to dig those out and share.
• Reconstructing Clothes for Dummies by Miranda Caroligne Burns — Yes, it’s part of the “dummies” series, but I covered up most of the annoying cover with tape. It’s actually an excellent book full of freak-friendly projects and featuring the lovely Amy LeBlanc on the cover. In fact, she’s how I found out about it. Weirdly most of the color photos in the book are not at all inspiring IMHO. It seems like they were trying to tone down the designs to appeal to a wider audience. But when you start looking at the actual concepts and customizing them, it’s the best book I’ve seen so far on trashion.

Also, I’ve discovered a new crafty heroine that I have to share. Secret Lentil rocks my world! But she doesn’t like blue and I just can’t understand that at all.