The Epic Saga of Makng a T-Shirt Quilt

 

Making a t-shirt quilt can be a pretty boring task. 

The expectation is to cut up shirts and sew them together with sashing or borders and 

quilt it all down nicely. 

That's really hard for me to do. 

I look at each shirt and think about the time it was worn. 

I notice if a shirt is worn out (which tells me it was an important shirt) or 

if it's like new and not lived in. 

Our clothes are the part of our appearance we have control over, 

they represent a big slice of how we want the world to see us. 

The tees for this quilt came from a father who wanted a quilt made from his son's shirts as a gift. The shirts he sent me were all over the place- nylon jerseys, heavy and light-weight tees, and collared shirts. It was a total jumble of fabrics and weights. I carefully cut and then fused cotton woven interfacing to the back of each cut-out to stabilize the stretchiness. There was no way on earth those random-sized and shaped pieces would make a normal block-type quilt.

 I taught middle school for years and know for a fact that there is NOTHING linear or organized about a 10-15-year-old! So I created a collaged middle on a foundation piece of gray fabric and deliberately skewed the pieces to resemble an explosion... that's what that age feels like. 

I bordered the middle with a bold red, added wide borders made from shirt parts that were more squared up, and am binding it (65" x 62") with some Tula Pink stripe fabric.

 

The back side has the thin white shirts appliqued on a white background so they blend. 

I did tons of free-motion quilting and that adds interest to the back & front.

I was losing my mind because even with all of the interfacing, things were shifting and puckering - but I decided just to go with it because unlike a quilt made from purchased fabric, this was a quilt filled with life and energy so naturally it would be dynamically wiggling this way and that!

Part of the situation was I was sewing through 6 layers in some areas - it was nuts. I also had to mindfully steer clear of neck facings, buttons, and those hateful vinyl numbers and letters on the shirts.

I have fondly named this quilt the Buffalo because it weighs a ton and 

is like wrestling a small animal to wrangle it under the needle of my domestic sewing machine. 

Good times!