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