This post originally appeared in my now defunct "Mom's View" blog. I
moved it to this blog at the request of my kids, who wanted to have all
of the various posts that accompanied their high school years in one
place. I've matched the publication dates here to their original post
date. If you're reading these posts, I sincerely thank you for taking
the time to go back through them all!
For middle child's high school graduation, I am making him a t-shirt quilt.
I have amassed a pile of t-shirts from his robotics tournaments and such not over the years, and I have piled them all up into a great, large pile of shirts to make into a quilt to give him when he graduates. (Yes, it's in less than a month. Think I could have waited any longer?)
The most important part of making this quilt is to make certain that all of the fabric has been sized, and gone through the washer a couple of times. I have three new t-shirts for this shirt that he's never worn before, so I've run them all through the washer and dryer several times over the last week, so that they will have shrunk up, much like the older shirts that he's worn many times over that are going into this quilt.
The next step is to cut the shirts up. That's where I am now. The shirts have been cut apart, so the arms and backs have been removed. I have just the fronts, uncut, with the logos and pictures on them.
I also have the backing from the fabric store. There is a special backing that is ironed onto the back of the cotton jersey in order to give the fabric stability, so that it won't stretch oddly out of shape when it is sewn together with other t-shirts, or with the cotton squares I'll be using for contrast.
I bought other fabric at the store to tie it all together. I'm not expecting to have enough shirt fronts to fill an entire quilt, so I am going to alternate blocks of t-shirts with blocks of fabric.
And now, we arrive at my conundrum. I have all the t-shirt fronts, but the designs are all different sizes, and I need to find a consistent size that will hold all of the designs so that I can cut the fabric blocks the same size.
Ahh... Math. I always wondered when you would rear your ugly head! If only my math teachers in high school had told me that I'd need to know this in order to do craft projects, I probably would have paid closer attention!
Seriously. I have a large mat - 36" x 36" for cutting out quilt blocks. I'll be pulling out the mat later on today, and measuring the designs on all of the shirts and finding the one consistent size that I will need to cut every block. I'm planning on going for the shirt with the largest design- and then adding an extra inch and half on every side- so that there is a fabric border around the picture, and 1/4" all the way around for seam allowance.
I'll post the pictures tomorrow. This promises to be an interesting experience today!
I have amassed a pile of t-shirts from his robotics tournaments and such not over the years, and I have piled them all up into a great, large pile of shirts to make into a quilt to give him when he graduates. (Yes, it's in less than a month. Think I could have waited any longer?)
The most important part of making this quilt is to make certain that all of the fabric has been sized, and gone through the washer a couple of times. I have three new t-shirts for this shirt that he's never worn before, so I've run them all through the washer and dryer several times over the last week, so that they will have shrunk up, much like the older shirts that he's worn many times over that are going into this quilt.
The next step is to cut the shirts up. That's where I am now. The shirts have been cut apart, so the arms and backs have been removed. I have just the fronts, uncut, with the logos and pictures on them.
I also have the backing from the fabric store. There is a special backing that is ironed onto the back of the cotton jersey in order to give the fabric stability, so that it won't stretch oddly out of shape when it is sewn together with other t-shirts, or with the cotton squares I'll be using for contrast.
I bought other fabric at the store to tie it all together. I'm not expecting to have enough shirt fronts to fill an entire quilt, so I am going to alternate blocks of t-shirts with blocks of fabric.
And now, we arrive at my conundrum. I have all the t-shirt fronts, but the designs are all different sizes, and I need to find a consistent size that will hold all of the designs so that I can cut the fabric blocks the same size.
Ahh... Math. I always wondered when you would rear your ugly head! If only my math teachers in high school had told me that I'd need to know this in order to do craft projects, I probably would have paid closer attention!
Seriously. I have a large mat - 36" x 36" for cutting out quilt blocks. I'll be pulling out the mat later on today, and measuring the designs on all of the shirts and finding the one consistent size that I will need to cut every block. I'm planning on going for the shirt with the largest design- and then adding an extra inch and half on every side- so that there is a fabric border around the picture, and 1/4" all the way around for seam allowance.
I'll post the pictures tomorrow. This promises to be an interesting experience today!
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