Midway through September Textile Love

It’s midway through September Textile Love, sponsored by Seam Collective. This annual event is always an intriguing journey—contemplating what textiles mean to me, reviewing recent and past photos of my work, and thinking bout how the pieces might relate to the daily prompts. 

Prompts (clockwise from top left): Language, Story-telling, Craft or Art, Experiment.

The prompts

The 2026 prompts, as in the past seasons, have been diverse and thoughtful. The responses from other participants are interesting and insightful, and the photographs of participants’ work are always inspiring. 

Prompts (clockwise from top left): Language, Rethink, Friendship, Caring.

The prompts get me looking at the familiar pieces with fresh eyes. 

Prompts (clockwise from top left): Historical, Color, Historical, Rethink.

How to love textiles… count the ways

There are myriad ways to love textiles! The remaining prompts for September Textile Love offer reasons to look at them through a different lens and make new discoveries.

September Textile Love 2026 prompts.

Unraveled. Reimagined. Re-knit.

Everything deserves a second chance—especially good yarn. This pair of knitted mittens started with yarn that already had a story—as a fingerless mitt sample and a gauge swatch—and then found its way into these mittens.

Finished mittens and remaining yarn.

The fingerless mitt already had its moment… as a sample. It also was a single mitt and had no mate. The gauge swatch had already fulfilled its mission.  

Reclaiming the yarn

The yarn that was used in these samples is a cotton/superwash merino/silk/seacell blend in a lovely blueish-green color [color name: storm]. Much too beautiful to let languish in the stash as a sample or a swatch! Time to reclaim and repurpose.

The sample mitt was knit flat and seamed. Once the side seam was unpicked, frogging [unraveling] and rewinding began.

Flat sample ready for frogging.

Frogging and rewinding the yarn from the gauge swatch was easy.

Reclaiming the yarn from a gauge swatch.

Because of my yearlong mitten knitting charity project, I combined the reclaimed yarn with a few other leftover bits, to set the stage for a new opportunity. These unneeded samples had found a new purpose. 

Recovered yarn (dark green) and two other leftover yarns.

Colorwork: a little yarn, a big impact

The mittens started with a corrugated ribbed cuff in two colors. Although a little more time-consuming to knit (simultaneously working a different yarn in each hand), the corrugated ribbing shows off two contrasting colors, provides texture, and adds a colorful detail to the mittens.

Three-color mittens with a corrugated ribbed cuff, and stranded colorwork.

With a few rounds knit after the thumb gusset, I introduced the white yarn with stranded colorwork in a geometric pattern. This ditsy design makes the most out of a small amount of yarn, is gender-neutral, and the pattern—with a 4-stitch repeat—divided evenly into the 32 stitches I had on the needles. It was a fun challenge to see how far the reclaimed and leftover yarns could go. 

 A new story

The yarn had a story prior to knitting these new mittens, and now it’s carrying that story forward into a new one. While participating in September Textile Love this month, the Day 4 prompt was “Story-telling.” Several of the participants cited that part of the story of any textile piece is the story and meanings contained in the materials themselves—the breed of sheep from which the yarn is spun, the country that raises the animals or grows the fibers, the people that weave the cloth. Another chapter to that story is where the maker purchased the materials or how they came upon having them—while on a trip, on holiday, gifted from a friend, a thrift store find, etc. So many layers to its story! 

Remaining yarn after knitting the mittens.

The story continues

Perhaps one of my favorite things about stash buster projects is that nothing really has to be the end of the road. A project can be unraveled, re-cut, reimagined, and made into something entirely new.

There’s still a little yarn left over from making these mittens. So apparently, this story isn’t quite finished yet!

 

September Textile Love: 30 days of textile inspiration

September is here, and that means it’s time for September Textile Love, hosted by Seam Collective!

This year, the Challenge snuck up on me… but when the list of prompts showed up in my e-mailbox on August 31, I decided to participate again. 2026 marks my 9th year taking part.

September Textile Love 2026 prompts.

What is the September Textile Love challenge?

The idea is pretty simple: 30 days, 30 textile-related prompts, and an invitation to makers, artists, stitchers, quilters, knitters, weavers, yarn/fabric/thread aficionados, and textile lovers to share their work and their own interpretation of the prompt. 

There are no right or wrong answers! A single word or idea can inspire so many different responses. Give a group of textile artists the same prompt and you’ll get a myriad of interpretations. But know there will be 30 days of something surprising and inspiring popping up in your Instagram feed. 

Textile stitch landscape.

There is a September Textile Love Planner available on the Seam Collective blog. You can print it out and make a few notes. Sometimes I immediately know how to respond to a prompt, but for others… I have to scroll through photos, works-in-progress, less-than-successful experiments, and the creative corners of my brain to figure out what that prompt means to me.

The prompts are a good way to revisit previous work, review what’s currently on the cutting table, as well as discover new textile artists from around the world. The challenge, which began in 2017, has grown into a wonderfully supportive online textile community. It does not disappoint!

30 days of textile inspiration

So, for the next 30 days, I’ll be celebrating the love of textiles… one prompt at a time. Whether you’re a longtime participant or this is your first year discovering September Textile Love, I hope you’ll join in the textile love. Share your projects or simply follow along and enjoy all the creativity. 

Make Nine finish #8 from the stash: Wiksten, Cottage Shirt

This Make Nine 2026 finish #8 fulfills my second Wild Card prompt. For this prompt, I made two tops: a Wiksten top and a Cottage Shirt, both sewn from fabrics already living in my stash. 

Wiksten top, Make Nine 2026 finish #8.

From the fabric stash

All of the fabrics for these tops were ones I already owned: two with yardage, an off-cut from another project, and some fat quarters. These finishes are especially satisfying as I love finding a use for those smaller pieces that are too good to throw away but never quite seem big enough for a planned project. 

Wiksten top made with Annabel Wrigley and Marcia Derse fabric prints [Windham Fabrics].

For the Wiksten top, I started with a long cut-off piece from a 108” wide backing with a design that looks like improvisational patchwork. Not having enough continuous yardage for all the pattern pieces, piecing was necessary. I also had to accommodate lengthwise and crosswise grain directions of these leftover fabric pieces. 

After a consultation with an expert garment maker and trusted friend, Dr. Lauren Rudd, who is the chair of the Fashion Merchandising department at Tennessee Tech University, we determined potential issues with the varying grain directions were minimal, and she suggested an insert at the center front to accommodate the short yardage. Using a scrap piece of the circle fabric print, I cut it “ruler-free” (to honor the improv theme) and sewed it at the center front to connect the two front pieces.

Wearing my new Wiksten top in my Intro to Improv Quilts class.

Having limited yardage for this simple top, a fabric from the Halloween collection, Spooky and Witchy [Art Gallery Fabrics], was used for the neck facing. It’s a small detail, but I love knowing that a little bit of whimsy is sewn inside the garment.

The potion print from the Spooky ‘n Witchy collection was used for the neck facing.

From the pattern stash

Both of these tops were “Go To” patterns from my pattern collection. They were already fitted to my measurements which meant no muslins were needed—just move straight to cutting and sewing. Exactly the kind of garment project I needed when I had a week before my class at John C. Campbell Folk School… and I wanted to wear “something new.”

Here I am wearing the Cottage Shirt while teaching Intro to Improvisational Quilts
at the Folk School.

For my new Cottage Shirt [The Sewing Workshop], one fabric print was used for the fronts and sleeves, another print for the lower back, and the back yoke was improvisationally pieced with fabric scraps from the “Spare Parts Department”—my box of cut-offs and patchwork pieces left over from other projects. Nothing goes to waste if I can help it… especially with Improv!

Improv patchwork for the back yoke.

From the button stash

The Cottage Shirt has another stash-busting detail: a mix of orphan buttons from the button box. 

Auditioning random orphan buttons for the Cottage Shirt.

The buttons were all singles, with no particular reason to belong together other than they were: 1) the right size, and 2) were waiting for a job! I think they work perfectly for this improvisational- and sustainable-themed shirt… and the quirky assortment adds to the personality and artsy nature of the shirt.

Finished Cottage Shirt with orphan buttons.

One aspect of the Sewing Workshop patterns is a fabulous pressing tip—using manilla folder weight card stock with various seam allowance lines marked on them. They are used for pressing hems and fold lines to ensure accuracy as well as expedite the process. I used them on both garments.

Pressing guides and variegated thread.

Another fun detail on these new tops was using a 40 wt. cotton, multi-colored variegated thread for top stitching and sewing on the buttons. With the variety of colors of the fabrics, a multi-color thread felt right in line with the other characteristics of these garments.

A sustainable Make Nine finish

One of the things I enjoy about doing the Make Nine Challenge every year? The goal isn’t necessarily to make something completely new or ambitious every time. Sometimes it’s about being sustainable, using what I already have, returning to patterns I know work for me, and making clothes that I’ll wear more than once.

Wild Card prompt for Make Nine 2026.

Multiple stash fabrics, a handful of leftover pieces, some orphan buttons, and two well-loved garment patterns turned into two very wearable Wild Card finishes. Make Nine #8 is on the books… and documented here and on my Make Nine 2026 tracker!

Make Nine 2026 tracker, August 2026.