I thought I should share the tee shirt quilt I made my sister in law for Christmas 2013. I know, took me long enough...
Anyways, the "tutorial" part of this post may not be the best, as I was rushing and didn't even think to take progress pictures.
Here is the finished product:
As it was a Christmas present, and I live in NH, outside pictures with nice lighting just couldn't happen. This quilt was 5 squares across x 5 squares down, with black 2 inch sashing in between. The border was made from tee shirt scraps and a bit of my sanity.
The first thing I do when making a teeshirt quilt and rough cut the shirts. I use my fabric scissors to cut the face of the shirt out from the rest of the shirt.
Next you need to stabilize the shirts for precise cutting. I used a batting that has heat activated glue on one side. You simply iron the shirts to the batting. WARNING: Screen printed tee shirts WILL come off on your iron and ruin your very expensive fancy iron... do NOT iron over the screen printed parts! Your quilting will hold those portions down if you are concerned about it. For my next tee shirt quilt, I will NOT use this method. Cutting the material is very hard because it's so thick. The fibers from the batting will ruin your sewing machine. And it's incredibly expensive! Next time, I will buy a less expensive, thin stabilizer, and a separate batting.
You cannot cut the tee shirt without stabilizing it in some manner. The material will stretch even under the best rotary cutter.
I used my Fiskars 12.5 x 12.5 inch square ruler for each piece. This makes the finished square 12 x 12. For the shirts with only a small logo on the chest, I used my 6.5 x 6.5 inch square ruler to make the mini squares you see in the third row.
Once all the tee shirts were cut, I attached the Black Moda jelly roll strips. First, you add the strips in between the shirts to make the long rows. Once the rows are done, you attach the back strips to pull them together. Simply put, you first add the black going vertically, then attach the black horizontally. I use the Missouri Star Quilt Company's method of lining up my sashes: Carefully. :) This is where you take your time, pin, double check, repin, and then sew. If your sashes don't line up, it doesn't have the appropriate window pane effect.
The boarder. The boarder was a labor of love. I wanted to do something unique and colorful for my sister in law, because she is a unique and colorful individual. Each piece was cut 1.5 x 2.5 inches (1 x 2 inches finished) I cut an obscene number of pieces. All of them with the adhesive backing on them. My poor cutting mat and rotary cutter! Then, I sewed them all together. My sewing machine wanted to die after this one! It was very difficult to work with these, as the seams had double batting at this point. I mitered the corners to maintain the look of the boarder. The easiest way to do this was to sew the boarder the length of the blanket. When I got to the end, I measured a 1/4 inch out, and used the diagonal line on my ruler to cut a 45 degree angle. I would sew the 45 degree angle together, and continue sewing the next edge of the quilt. Again, this wasn't the easiest thing to do, as I was dealing with quadruple binding in some points.
The backing was fun to piece together. As this isn't a standard sized quilt, there was no standard piece of backing fabric that would fit the quilt. So I improvised with fabrics I knew my sister in law would love.
You can see the border pieces make an appearance, sewn together lengthwise instead this time. The black jelly roll piece runs the height of the fabric. And I pulled in a sky blue fabric strip to add some more character. I'm really pleased with the back. I think it's fun and different.
My good friend Terry did a fun bubble detail in the quilting. I felt it offset the squares really well, and also represented my sister in law's personality.
For the binding, I bought a mini jelly roll pack of bright fun colors, and interchanged the colors. I used my standard 2 1/4 inch binding, sewn to the back, and then the decorative stitch on top.
Overall, I'm really pleased with how this quilt came out. I think I made it a bit more difficult on myself than necessary with how I chose to do the batting and border. Hubby would like a tee shirt quilt next, and I will definitely take those lessons with me. And hopefully establish a MUCH better tutorial!
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