2010-05-24

Bloggers' Quilt Festival~

Yay, the bloggers quilt festival is here!




I'll tell ya, I've been waiting for this round.  I finished this quilt at the beginning of May and it's been hard to keep it a secret since then..

This is my T-shirt quilt, started in January of 2007, mostly assembled at the 2008 Silver City Guild retreat, quilted last fall, and I finally finished the binding a few weeks ago.  Like most of my quilts, the process was long, I learned a lot, and enjoyed just about every minute.
There are t-shirts from 1990-2005, 15 years of my life!  Most are shirts I wore in college, and I included one that Costas was wearing when we first started dating.  I used fusible interfacing on the backs of the shirts and then just stitched them to strips of my favorite fabrics, sometimes working in log cabin fashion, sometimes just putting pieces together as they fit until I had blocks big enough.  I made 5 or 6 complete patchwork blocks (no t-shirt fabric) from the crumbs left from the other blocks. I used up a lot of my favorite fabrics in this quilt, and for the years that it sat as a UFO I sometimes found myself saying "dude, where is that ____?!" and searching the stash for it, only to find it later in this quilt.  Yeah, that's how it goes around my sewing room sometimes...
We've been using it on our bed since I finished it and George loves it.
(He pays attention to each detail..)
He wakes up in the morning and tells me what's in each picture.  There's one hypercolor shirt with animals that he is particularly fond of and it keeps him busy for a long time... and the Mr. Bubble on the bottom, dad got me that shirt in high school when I hadn't used Mr. Bubble for years.. and now George just started using it so he gets excited about that one too.
These were the T-shirts I just couldn't throw away, even when they got worn and stretched out.  I mean, check out this Engrish:

This shirt was in my apartment in Hokkaido when I moved in.  LOVED it!
This came from a Japanese thrift store.  Never fit  very well, but I needed to have it, you know?
From my time in the traveling drama troupe (it says "Hokkaido Players"  "Let's Musical"):
And one of the crumb pieced blocks:

I like this quilt because it captures so much of my life in one nice 104"x104" frame.  I think it'll have to be our winter bed quilt though because the polyester interfacing makes it really warm.  If you're thinking about making this type of t-shirt quilt I'm happy to answer any questions, but if you think I'm still saving t-shirts for the next one, you're nuts.  It was a labor of love, and one is enough. 

19 comments:

soggybottomflats said...

I love your quilt! It does look like a labor of love and a "once" only. Thanks for sharing, Elaine

BJ said...

This is the nicest T-shirt quilt I have ever seen. Good job! Love that you incorporated Log Cabin style blocks. It's a great quilt.

janet said...

What a wonderful memory quilt.

Angie Padilla said...

I'm not a big fan of T-shirt quilts, but this one is the exception. To begin, your T-shirts are great, and the setting really brings them out beautifully. I love your choice of fabric colors. Nice artsy quilt.

Tonya said...

This is completely awesome! You should be really proud of it. This is the first time I have seen a t-shirt quilt and I thought, "I want to make one with my t-shirts." Your hard work was completely worth it.

Marika said...

Very beautiful quilt work !

Martine Kuciel said...

très joli superbes couleurs

Leila said...

What a great quilt! I love that the colors actually work together. It's beautiful!

Sandra Schwab said...

Oh wow, this is wonderful! What a great way of keeping memories!

Best wishes from Germany,
Sandy

Leslie said...

this has got to be the coolest t shirt quilt i have ever seen. my husband wants one out of his old shirts, we have so many that they are overtaking our storage. i love how you added some blocks that were not t shirt

Susan Michele said...

This t-shirt quilt rocks! I love it!

SewCalGal said...

Best t-shirt quilt I've ever seen. You did a great job!

SewCalGal
www.sewcalgal.blogspot.com

Eileen said...

this is the very first tee shirt quilt that i find beautiful!! i've never wanted to make one because they always look kitchy. what a great job!!

Dielle said...

Oh my gosh, I LOVED my hypercolor shirt! And I've got a bunch of tshirts that defined me in similar ways. Right now my kids are using them for night shirts, but maybe I'll rescue them back and do something like this. Seriously the prettiest tshirt quilt I've ever seen!

rebecs said...

i love how you put this together. i have a stack of tshirts awaiting a quilt. thanks for sharing.

Miri said...

Great T shirt quilt! This is definitely the prettiest T shirt quilt I've ever seen!

I guess you lived in Hokkaido...I lived outside Kyoto for a little more than a year, years ago.

Michelle said...

Spectacular! Love the colors. What a great bunch of memories. I can see why your little guy is so fascinated.

Laurel H. said...

I think this is the best looking T shirt quilt I have ever seen; congrats on an awesome job!

Donna said...

I don't usually like T-shirt quilts but yours is great! I've been dreading making one for my future daughter-in-law but now I know how I'm going to do it. Thanks for the idea!

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