My Sister's T-Shirt Quilt

 

The finished t-shirt quilt.

My daughter's t-shirt quilt  from a few years ago.   Same table - different season.  There is also a t-shirt in common from a race they ran together!   

     My very athletic (and t-shirt saving) sister,  requested a t-shirt quilt.  After struggling to fit all the odd sized shirt pieces together in my daughter's quilt, I was determined to cut all the shirt pieces the same size for my sister's!  

     I purchased a 12 1/2 inch square  Omnigrip quilter's ruler.  That was well worth the investment.   I lent it to my sister to aid her choice of shirts; I had her cut off the and back of 33 t-shirts.   Once I had the stack of shirt tops, I ironed on some lightweight fusible interfacing to stabilize the stretchiness and then cut out all the 12 1/2 inch squares.   These t-shirts reflect a her wide variety of athletic (and other fun) endeavors over the years. 

     Once I picked out the final 30 squares, I arranged the darker and lighter ones into a checkerboard pattern and sewed them together.   Sewing on the knit interfaced fabric, some of which was shiny and some thick cotton, was difficult.  I decided to tie it, rather than quilt  it.  

Putting the pieces together

     I used a nice flannel for the backing, and a fluffier batting than usual.  Instead of trying to quilt this top, I used a bright yellow embroidery floss and tied it about every 4 inches (per the batting instructions)  I found that  using some rubber finger tips and a thimble helped get the needle through the thick pieces on top.

     Here is the oldest t-shirt of the bunch, which shows the ties.  Seriously, who keeps t-shirts for over 40 years?  Apparently my sister! 

Swimming long ago.

A sampling of the other t-shirts:

More swimming, in college.

More running.  Whew, I get tired looking at all of these activities!

Wind surfing!

     I used Wonder Clips for the first time.  Another purchase I do not regret! I had some left over strips which I put together for a scrappy binding.   This picture shows off the orange flannel on the back. 

     The long and cold winter has made it hard to get good pictures.  This mediocre photo shows the fluffiness of the quilt, and the scrappy binding. 

     It is also hard to get a good picture in the snow!  

     Our attempt at photographing the quilt at my normal spot was thwarted by the wind!  My sister was tasked with holding up the quilt in the wind and cold.  

     My sister loves her warm quilt, which is full of memories.  It was a  fun project to work on. I have a few more projects underway, which I hope I will be able to share with you soon.

Take care, 
Gretchen