The T-Shirt Quilt: A labor of love

It. Is. Done!! The t-shirt quilt is finished and being loved, by me, a LOT. I had a lot of anxiety over this quilt. Mostly about cutting up the "memories" the shirts held, but I got over those fears and got started. You can read about the beginning here.

 

The quilt measures a whopping 55"x 90", so it covers the top of my queen sized bed, if you need a size reference! It's huge, but there's just more of it to love.

The blocks sewed together better than I expected because I interfaced each one of them. It kept the material from stretching, but it also gave me a major headache. I now hate interfacing after ironing all of it down to these huge shirts.

 I love how big and colorful it is....

Perfect for a superhero cape!

 

It makes me soooo happy. And it's hands-down the warmest blanket in my house. ALL of those shirts, and it's backed with super-soft fleece, so it's two layers of comfort.

 

 

I debated how to quilt this thing for a long time. I didn't want to use my traditional straight line quilting like these quilts: A Christmas Quilt, A baby quilt, and A Nautical Quilt.

 

So I bought a free motion foot for my machine, and started practicing. Practicing on small projects like potholders was lots of fun....but once I got this beast of a quilt under my tiny little machine, the fun went away quickly.

 

It is painfully difficult to quilt a blanket this large with a small machine, but it can be done. With lots of patience, and a few screaming sessions, it got finished. I just meandered all over each block, trying to avoid going over or through really important things on the shirts.

 

The quilting shows up better on the back, and actually looks like a fun puzzle.

Once the quilting was done, I knew I didn't have the energy for a traditional binding, so I wrapped the backing fabric around to the front, rolled the raw edge under, and stitched it down. I like the way it turned out. Any other binding would have been too rough on such a soft quilt.

I love staring at the finished product, remembering all of the good times these shirts went through.

 

I was going to put it up in my "college box", but after all this work, I would rather enjoy it. It has already accompanied me on a few naps.

Now that this one is out of the way, it's time for some more, much smaller, projects.

Up next.... A BIG girl room for a little girl who will be turning 3 all too soon...