My favorite niece is turning seven today. Seven! What a great age! To honor her birthday I did something I never do: I followed a pattern. In all my creative pursuits - cooking, knitting, crocheting, collage - I usually make things up or modify an existing recipe heavily. Weaving usually requires a lot of planning and math, but with my table loom it's very intuitive - very let's-see-how-this-goes - which suits me perfectly.
If you follow me on Pinterest, you know that I pin a lot of craft projects, but the honest truth is that I rarely make them. Sometimes I riff off an idea, sure, but I rarely follow the pattern. Then along came Maya Donnenfeld's new book, Reinvention. You may recognize Maya's hugely popular coffee bean bins, which were a hit on etsy and led to her developing the patterns for this book. All the projects use materials that had a previous life, from jeans and vintage linens to tyvek mailers. I want to make about half of them, but I probably won't because, well, you know. I don't follow patterns.
But with a new seven-year-old in the making, I simply couldn't resist the allure of these sweet little Blossom Bands, as Maya calls them. They're made from old t-shirts, which of course I just happen to have on hand (being the craft hoarder that I am), and stitched together by hand. I mostly followed the pattern exactly as it's written, though I couldn't resist a little customization in the addition of some glow-in-the-dark yarn. Who can resist glow-in-the-dark yarn?
Here's the present all wrapped up and ready to go with another little t-shirt pom-pom on top. Happy my-favorite-niece's-seventh-birthday to you all! 
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