Tee shirt quilt finished!

I machine quilted the tee shirt quilt!

It's so hard to stretch the backing fabric and get it to lay flat.

I have a wide tiled hallway that I lay the sandwich quilt on, and try to flatten out all the bumps.

Unfortunately, some of the folds weren't flattened. 

I noticed the bubbles on the backing as I was machine quilting.

I had to unpick 4 long rows, but I flattened out the bubbles and now it looks great!

I think the crosshatch quilt looks very masculine :)

The backing fabric looks gray, but it's an offwhite background with black letters.

The letters are the words to the pledge of allegiance.

Perfect for a conservative and patriotic young man :)

The fabric is by Sweetwater.

Tee shirt quilt

I'm making a tee shirt quilt for a young man who's graduating from High School in May.

His Mom has been collecting his shirts since 

he was about 5 or 6 years old.

It would be really easy to cut all the logos out the same size, maybe 12" square.

The reality is that not all the logos are the same size!

When I made a tee shirt for my son about 4 years ago, it was completely custom and I thought it was so pretty.

A lot of work but worth it.

You can see his here and here :)

The secret to making a tee shirt quilt is to use an iron on 

"woven" stabilizer.

The stabilizer keeps those slippery fabrics (sports jerseys) and stretchy knits in place, as if they are quilting fabrics.

I cut out the logos, iron on the stabilizer, and then trim them with my rotary cutter to the size that looks the best, or fits the best.

Another secret, is to use a cloth when ironing the tee shirt logos at ALL TIMES!

I smeared the tip of the "y" on the Blue Jays a little 

because I forgot....

You can see it when the quilt blocks are laid out below.

The "Simms" block was a strip of fabric that was embroidered and then sewed to the jersey.  

I just cut off the embroidered section, that's what I mean when I say that I'm at the mercy of the logos, lol!

There is no way I could have cut this into a 12" square!

The blocks have all been trimmed, 

and I recorded the size of each block.

I laid the blocks out, mostly in chronological order.

I quilted the young man's name, 

using Lori Holt's Spelling Bee book.

I used red because it balances out the other two blocks.

(I received a few more shirts after I had the quilt puzzle calculated)

Garrett loves the NY giants (red and blue) and blue was the color of both of the high schools that he went to.

I used gray for the background of his name to make it look more like a jersey, but it looks a little brown :(

This architectural rendering took me hours!!!

I fit all the logos, added sashing, and I had to do it in a manner that I was still able to sew.  

For instance, the blocks had to be graphed into larger blocks.

I did this before I received the extra shitts, 

that's why it's good have an eraser close by :)

I had to cut the tee shirt at an angle because that's where the seam was.

I sewed some red Kona along the seam, pressed it away from the seam, trimmed it and it will never be noticeable :)

 Here's my redesigned architectural rendering, most of the adjustments were made at the top of the pattern.

Here are all the sashing pieces, I used 2 packs of Alpha Bitties.

The numbers are circled and I used double letters for the blue Alpha Bitties.

I crossed off the sashing pieces as I used them.

 Here is the quilt top all finished!

I added a 2 1/2" border to give it a NY Giants color theme.

I used white sashing on my son's quilt, but noticed that it got dirty very easily.

I like the "rich" look of the blue sashing, and there are quite a few white blocks that wouldn't have shown up very well if I had used white.

A few interesting things to note about the tee shirts.

Garrett is the young man's name, Simms is his middle name and Ruslin is his last name, all on the quilt :)

The reason I put his name at the bottom of the quilt is because I pictured the quilt laying on his bed in his college dorm.

When he walks into the room, he will immediately see his name and remember how much his mom loves him because she lovingly had this quilt made for him :)

I'll show you the quilt again when it's machine quilted.

That will be a challenge because the quilt top is heavier than normal because of the weight of the tee shirts!

Tee Shirt Quilt, finished!

I have been working on this quilt since January, 5 months ago!

I cut strips of fabric for the binding, then the quilt sat for about 6 weeks.

I had too many other things to do....

Sean recently asked me when I was going to finish his quilt.

I put everything else aside and sewed and pressed the binding.

I sewed the binding onto the quilt and hand stitched the binding to the back until I was finished.

It took about 3 days.

The quilt is really gorgeous, I'm very pleased with it :)

I can tell you the meaning of every tee shirt on this quilt, it has been a walk down memory lane.

I put the quilt on Sean's bed while he was gone.

When he came home, he went upstairs to his bedroom.

He came down shortly after with the biggest smile on his face.

Then he gave me the biggest, longest hug!

It was worth every moment of hard but enjoyable work :)

I haven't seen Sean's bed look like this since, but the quilt is finished and he loves it!!!

Tee Shirt Quilt, finished top!

I wondered what I could do to brighten up the border on this quilt.

I love, love, love red in a quilt, and I also love stars.

I decided to make four Kona red stars with white backgrounds to sew into the four corners of the quilt.

I think they're bright and beautiful!

I needed 2 people to hold up this quilt, but my husband was the only one available :)

Even though the stars at the top of the quilt aren't completely visible, you get the idea. 

I love the effect of the bright red stars in the corners, it makes the reds in the quilt pop.

Now I have to quilt it.

My machine will be able to handle it, but will I?

I've only ever machine quilted baby quilts before, but I never had my Bernina 750 QE then.

This is a full size quilt.

It may take a little over a week to complete, but I'll be sure and show you the results.

Stay tuned.....

Tee Shirt Quilt, WIP

I'm almost finished with my tee shirt quilt!

Well, there's still lots more to do, but now I can see the light :)

This is the top, all pieced together!

The "cougars" letters to the extreme right of the quilt are embroidered letters that were on a baseball jersey.

I cut them out and topstitched them onto white fabric.

I really like how that block turned out.

I was originally making a twin size quilt, but it has turned into a full size quilt.

I'm using this Kona slate for an 8" border, and the red polka dot for the binding.
I'm going to add quilt blocks to all four corners, that will be an extra feature that will add more interest.

I'd say it's a masculine quilt, and there are some touches of red in the quilt.

I always love a red binding that adds a little pop!

Did I tell you that I'm quilting this baby myself?

Yup, it will be a new experience, but I'm confident that my machine and I will be able to get the job done :)

Stay tuned.....

Tee Shirt Quilt, WIP

I'm still working on this quilt for Sean :)

You can see my first post about this quilt here.

I had hoped to be further along that this, but I have been working on other projects.

I am a procrastinator when it comes to difficult things!

I appliquéd Sean's soccer number to some Kona fabric to replicate his soccer jersey.

Now I am squaring it to 12 l/2".

This is the top row of the quilt.

The two #32's are his "home" and "away" soccer game shirts.

I added a little bit of quilty color to the left of the Vikings :)

Those blocks are the leaves that I didn't like from the "Quilty fun Sew Along".  

I put them to good use :)  Ha ha!
I have a small box of "orphan blocks".

The purple and white arrow to the right of the white Vikings are some half square triangles that were left over from my grand daughter Kylie's wall hanging I made for her over a year ago.

These cougar and BYU embroideries used to be on a knit beanie.

I just cut around them and topstitched them to navy blue fabric.

Progress!  

We are moving this weekend, only a few blocks away :)

I am going to try and get this top sewn together today.

Wish me luck!

Tee Shirt Quilt WIP

Sometimes I run out of ideas when I'm designing a quilt, it's almost like a stupor of thought.

I think about the quilt while I'm doing other things, like sleeping, 

ha ha!

The creative juices finally started to flow and I was able to draw the design on graph paper, 4 pages taped together.

I laid out the blocks in the order I wanted them, with some of the more meaningful tee shirt blocks in the center.

This is a more close up view.

I love the game day shirt, the principal tried to get it banned but it was too late, they were already printed and sold and the students were wearing them.

The girl who designed them was heartbroken so I'm glad they stayed :)

I was able to get the whole center section sashed.  Yeah!

I bought some BYU fabric at JoAnn fabrics in California.

There are a few sections in the quilt that I am adding the BYU fabric.

The navy and gray tee shirt is from Hollister.

One of Sean's girlfriends gave it to him, so it's appropriate that I include the logo :)

Remember this beanie from my last post here?

Look how wonderful the block looks!!!

The Cougar and the logo are satin stitch appliqued.

I cut along the outside of the satin stitch and simply top stitched on the inside of the satin stitch.

Super easy!

Now the soccer jersey, you know how silky and stretchy that fabric is.....and the number is rubber ironed on.

I traced the number and with a light box, traced it onto red fabric and I'm going to needle turn applique it.

I have a white number to applique onto navy as well.

That's it for now, stay tuned for more.....

Tee shirt quilt in the works...

My son Sean, is serving a 2 year church mission in Brazil.

Before he left, when he was packing up his things, he carefully chose some shirts for me to make him a quilt.

There are about 30 in this basket.

Sean will be home on April 17 (yippee!) so I am busily trying to get his quilt top made.

This isn't a shirt, it's a beanie!

Sean has wanted to go to BYU since he was 7 years old :)

I might just stitch these "badges" onto fabric.

I squared this tee shirt graphic into a 12 l/2" square.

A good way to get the most of a graphic is to cut just inside of the sleeve seam.

This is Sean's soccer shirt, it was a big part of his life for many years.

I'm going to cut out both of the emblems and maybe sew them onto a piece of fabric.

I was going to cut out the number, but realized that the under armor fabric wouldn't be very good in a quilt, even with a stabilizer.

I put the soccer jersey onto my light box,

put paper on top and traced the number.

The next step will be buying some Kona red and appliqueing the numbers onto Kona white.

This was Sean's high school uniform shirt.  I have 5 of these!

This shirt is a WIP, and I'll show you the progress as I go.

The blocks aren't all the same size, so there will be some quilting blocks to fill in the empty spaces.

Thanks for stopping by!