Friday, February 28, 2014

First and Last T-shirt Quilt

When my youngest daughter was about twenty, she gave me some of her t-shirts and asked me if I would make her a quilt.  I put the shirts in a box and put them in one of my closets.  So, ten years later I took the box out of storage and decided it was time to make a quilt.  I previously made a rag quilt during January and I said that it was going to be my first and last rag quilt.  Same goes with the t-shirt quilt.  I am not much of a seamstress although I was trained in college to teach sewing.  My skills tend to be on larger sewing projects like making curtains and I have even made some slipcovers.  When it comes to more intricate work, I am not very precise.  This t-shirt quilt is definitely not perfect.  I had a hard time matching the strips and squares when I sewed them together.  And also, the binding was giving me trouble.  When I made the rag quilt, I had no trouble with the binding on it, so I don't know why I had so much trouble with this present project.  Showed the man of the house the finished quilt, and he said, "That is really a great idea and it turned out very nice".
He also has his projects and is now painting some of our furniture with chalk paint.  He is making the furniture look brand new and I love every piece.  So, we are always complementing each other's projects.
The following are pictures of the quilt.  I used lime green fabric for the backing that I bought at www.warehousefabricsinc.com for under $3.00 a yard.  I love their fabrics.  I am a good customer.
The t-shirts used were some high school, but mostly college t-shirts.  There were also several Hard Rock Café shirts that Leslie collected on her travels.  I had to back the shirts with iron on interfacing and I'm not sure that worked that great.  After adhering the interfacing I remembered that I hadn't prewashed the brighter and darker shirts, so I washed those squares several times so they wouldn't fade when the quilt was washed.  I noticed that the interfacing did not adhere to these after being washed.  Hopefully since the interfacing was sewn to the edges of each square, it will be okay.  Well, here is the quilt.  Notice how Katie the cat has to check out the quilt.







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