T Shirt Quilt

Sometime after Christmas I cut the fronts from all the T shirts my daughter in law gave me and put them in this box. They stayed there until August when I took them off the shelf and shot this photo. I think that was when I ironed the interfacing to the backs. at first it was on again - off again working on it as there were more interesting things to play with.

I worked this out in my Electric Quilt program and I followed it pretty closely. the striped fabric here was one of the stripes in the program but it represents the actual fabric well enough for design purposes. I ordered backing fabric and when it came I decided to use it for the borders also and I cut down the striped fabric on the side borders and eliminated the stripes on the top and bottom borders.

I used the stripes cut on the bias for the binding.

I constructed the top and quilted it in sections. the right and left sections included the borders and the center section included the sashings. I was undecided about including the more narrow top and bottom borders in the sections and in the end I left them off and added them after everything else was done. At some point I neglected to remember (in other words I forgot) that I considered adding them to the sections and went ahead and layered each section up. after I stitch the sections together on the machine I finish on the back with hand  I could have saved myself having to hand stitch those 2 long seams.

 

Here is the quilt almost finished, the binding is not on yet. That's me on the side. Some of the T shirts I was given were not in good shape but Jack had some brand new T shirts from motorcycle events they had attended together and he offered them for the quilt.

I gave it to John yesterday but didn't get a picture of him with the quilt.

 I think he likes it.

 

 

T Shirt Quilt

I have been working on the T shirt quilt. It is not a very colorful quilt so I wanted the sashing and borders to have some color. I figure red, white and blue is a pretty safe color palette and I found some striped fabric which I think that is also pretty safe.

This is what I worked out in EQ7.

The plain colors are the background colors of the shirts and the stripes are a good representation of the striped fabric I bought.

Those little plain squares in the sashing are small logos that needed to go into the quilt  and that was the best place to put them.

I ordered some blue fabric for the backing and that might go where that blue fabric is at the bottom of the vertical row on the left. I have to see how it looks.


I plan to quilt this in sections. The left section will be the border and the row of T shirts , the center will be the T shirts with the long sashing strips on both sides and the right side section will be the shirts and the right border. I like to do some quilting in the T shirt squares by outlining the motifs and writing and it is so much easier doing the quilting when the sections are a relatively narrow width.
I am still deciding if I will add the top and bottom borders as part of the sections and have long vertical borders or if I will add the top and bottom last for the long horizontal borders, which is the way I usually add my borders. Adding them last is more work for this quilt and that extra work would be two 65 inch lengths of hand stitching as I do the finishing on the back by hand after I put the sections together. I can think about it and make that decision when the backing fabric gets here.

T Shirt Quilt Finished

Finally! I put this quilt aside in February never thinking I wouldn't get back to it in a few days. It is good to be finished and it will soon be on it's way to my grandson. My son and daughter in law will be going to see him in 10 days and they are taking it with them. He picked out the T shirts he wanted in the quilt two years ago,  I hope he is still interested in having it.

It was hard getting a shot of the whole thing. I can't put it up on my design wall because it is blocked off with my tables and sewing machine set up for machine quilting. Maybe if I stood on a ladder I could have gotten a better shot but after my mishap on Tuesday I am not courting trouble by standing on a ladder.

The second photo shows the top edge of the quilt. My intention was for the top border sections of the 4 columns to alternate narrow, wide, narrow, wide but that got messed up when mixed up the 2 center sections I sewed the 3rd section to the first (left) section.  The distribution of light and dark shirts got messed up a little as well.  However I still  think I made the right decision to leave it where it is and just move the sashing.

I gave away my Rail Fence sample quilt from Quilt Camp. It will look much better as a throw at my granddaughter's than it did here. I am going to finish the Dresden Plate pillow and give it to her too. I think before I tackle any more UFO's I will make 6 placemats for my other granddaughter. She asked for them last year and I never found any more of the fabric that she wanted. I finally found a good substitute so I should get it done.

Progress

I finished the quilting on the 4 sections of the T shirt quilt. This is the first (probably the last) T shirt quilt I have made. I am not sure how it is supposed to be quilted but not matter, I never pay a lot of attention to what I am supposed to do. Of course there are always a lot of (I should have........)s. I quilted around the motifs in the T shirts. It is really minimal quilting as I didn't want to quilt all over everything but some of the T shirt squares were too big to leave unquilted. These are 2 of the blocks that show the quilting. Maybe there is too much open space but I think I will leave it. this is not an heirloom quilt and it will never be in a quilt show.

Last night I cut these 2 1/2 inch strips for a rail  fence quilt. It is a sample quilt for Quilt Camp using 3 colors.  the border will  be  Kona Bone like the light strips shown here and the binding will be the striped fabric. I am drawn to citrus colors  right now. Other people are making other versions,one Christmas with red and green, one multicolor and one red and gray (Ohio State) colors.  

We went to the Y today and then went to the arboretum to see what is blooming now. Not too many flowers except for the daffodils. I took some shots of one of my favorite trees.

 
I love the heart shaped leaves and the foliage is beautiful in the summer and fall.

T shirt quilt ready to layer

The T shirt quilt is ready to layer when I get the backing fabric. I am going to look for food themed fabric.

It is in 4 long vertical sections right now and that is how I will quilt it. The two outside vertical T shirt rows have the  borders sewn on and the second row from the left has the sashing sewn to the  left edge and the third row  from the left has sashing on both edges. You can't see the very bottom of the quilt here but that is the bottom row of T shirts. The end pieces of sashing are various widths and everything will be trimmed to match the left hand section which will be the standard for trimming. There will be 3 long vertical  seams and I will be finishing those seams on the back of the quilt by hand. I have enough of the striped fabric to make bias binding which I think always looks good with striped fabric. I have seen some food themed fabric on line but first I am going to check the local quilt shops.

I  was surprised how nicely the T Shirt sections behaved with the interfacing fused to the back.

T shirt quilt

It has probably been at least 2 years since my grandson picked out some of his T shirts to put in a quilt. About a year ago I decided it was time to reduce the bulk so they did not take up so much room in the closet. This past week I bought 10 yards of lightweight interfacing and decided that it was about time to make the quilt. I am thinking it would have been more meaningful to make it right away when I got the T shirts.
 This is my first T shirt quilt and I think I would opt for more uniform sizes if I ever do this again. Of course, that would not always be easy as the person choosing the shirts would most likely want all different sizes of the (artwork?).

Right now I am putting the long vertical rows together and to make them all the same length I will adjust the width of the top and bottom sashing strips to acheive that. The rest of the sashing is 2 1/2 inches. The easiest place I can lay them all out is on my bed and that has disturbed Jack on his computer; I have to squeeze past him to get to the other side of the bed. He really is pretty good natured about it but every time he looks annoyed I get a bit irritated.  Poor Jack, if I perceive that he is annoyed with me I get grumpy.

There will be 4 vertical  rows which I plan to quilt in sections.

I found this  multicolor stripe with a brown background. This quilt needs some color and I almost bought a very colorful splashy print but changed my mind at the last minute and opted for this more conservative stripe. I had originally planned to cut the long vertical sashing strips and the side borders on the lengthwise grain so the stripes would run lengthwise but when I tried it with the stripes the other way I changed my mind.

Some things really do need to be completed in a timely manner; I  am not sure he even cares about this anymore. I will finish it anyway and I know that if he isn't exactly thrilled about it he will  never let me know.