Sunday, August 24, 2014

t-shirt quilt

My kids swim team coach retired after this summer's season, and I was asked to make her a quilt with the t-shirts from all the previous years.  They told me it would count as my volunteer hours, and I jumped at the opportunity.  It was a no brainer...any swimming families out there?  You know all about volunteering at swim meets.   Making a quilt felt like such a treat.  

I had never made a t-shirt quilt before, so I searched around pinterest to get an idea of what needed to be done.  Basically all you have to do is stabilize the knit t-shirts before you sew them all together.  I used the thinnest suggested stabilizer, Pellon #906f.  I cut the collars and sleeves off the t-shirts, then ironed on the stabilizer, then trimmed to the size I wanted.  Mine were 15.5 inches (I think).
Inspiration came from this quilt, (it was even the same colors).  I found this polka dot for the backing at Hobby Lobby.  Matched our team colors perfectly.
Our coach has several phrases she uses all the time, so we used them on a block.  We talked about having them embroidered (but I don't have a machine that embroiders, and the turn around time at a shop was too long), we talked about doing it by hand (but my hand embroidery skills are seriously lacking), I ended up free-motion quilting it on my machine (I stabilized this piece of fabric too).  I didn't trust myself to just free-hand it, so I printed out the phrases and pinned them to the fabric, then I just sewed over them 3 or 4 times.  It worked out really well, a bit of a pain picking off all the paper, but not terrible.  I wish I'd used a darker color.  Black.
 black and white stripes for binding

8 comments:

  1. Great job on your first t-shirt quilt!

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  2. Looks great! I really like that striped binding.

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  3. This is awesome. Great idea and fabulous quilt.

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  4. Wow! Really nice job. I'm sure Coach will treasure this.

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  5. Beautiful! Gathering my supplies to do one with my hubby's old Harley t-shirts. I hope it's as nice as yours!

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  6. Really nice Net! I thought the top row had a ghurka at first glance :)

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  7. Great job! Love the choice of binding and backing as well.

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  8. wow, you're really kind, that's an amazing quilt.

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