2nd quilt from Dad's T-shirts and Hawaiian shirts

Missy had so many shirts that we made 2 quilts for her mom.  One, the smaller, will be a "travel quilt" that she can take with her.  This one is much larger, probably close to a queen sized quilt.

We initially had 28 shirts, so the quilt would be 4 blocks wide and 7 long, making it very long and skinny and out of proportion  I suggested that 2 more shirts would make it a more even size, and  Missy mentioned that there were some things that her dad had written, so she printed them onto fabric and we included them in the quilt.  This is clearly a card that was included with flowers as you can see "Minot's Flowers" on the bottom of the card.  Then he wrote "Thanks for the perfect family."

There is also a poem/story that he wrote about meeting his wife when he was 11 years old, and how they came to be married.  I nearly cried the first time I read that!

 

T-shirt quilts for Malia's sons

This one is for Harrison, her younger son.  I love the vertebrae on this quilt, but especially that they all glow in the dark!

And for Ozzie, here are his shirts.

I believe that Kesem was a day card or preschool that they  both attended.  I want to know how to they got to do "at sea"

 

"T-shirts and a couple of others for Lauren

These shirts belonged to a relative, and Lauren had me make them into a quilt for her  Her grandmother painted the watermelon in the block on the left side of the quilt.  The zipper in the Cardinals sweatshirt still opens.

 But this block allowed me to win at the "Slug Bug" game with my brother.  At least for one day./

Darcy's T-shirt quilt

Darcy pieced this quilt top herself, and then I got to quilt it. 

As a Weight Watcher, this is the BEST shirt!

But I also love the Waddling Dog one!

 

A t-shirt quilt for Erika

Erika brought me shirts from a friend to make a quilt out of earlier in the year, as well as one that she had started during the pandemic of her own shirts.  She got started, then I think got overwhelmed, and quit.  So, I picked it up in the middle of the project.  Some shirts were whole, some had been cut down, but not interface, others also interfaced with some type of interfacing that did not agree with my sewing machine, and even a few already stitched together.

I started by taking everything apart, added better interfacing to the ones that had some already, and tried to cut the remaining shirts to a consistent size.  However, since Erika had already cut a great many of them down, I felt like I was attempting to assemble a jigsaw puzzle without a photo to start with.

I ended up creating rows that were roughly the same width, then as needed adding khaki fabric as filler in between the rows to make the top as square as possible.  I also removed most of the paper from her remaining interfacing, but may have missed one or two.  So, the quilt has a bit of a crinkly sound to it.

All in all, I hope that she'll be pleased with the end results.

 

"T shirt quilt for Judd, made by Mom"

This quilt clearly has a story, and I only know a portion of it.  Paige contacted me about quilting a 2 sided t-shirt quilt in April 2023, and sent me photos.  Just by seeing the backing I could tell that this was not something I was willing to take on and offered other places to check with.  Sadly, no one was willing to take on the 2 sided t-shirts, so Paige reached out again to ask about completing the shirt with a traditional fabric backing, and that I was willing to take on.

The following show portions of the quilt while it was loaded on my machine as I had told Paige I'd send her some.  Usually, when making a t-shirt quilt, you fuse them shirts with interfacing to make them stable, and then stitch them like traditional quilt blocks.  Judd's mom seems to have started by cutting parts of the shirts and then hand appliqueing them to pieces of batik fabrics.  In addition, there were numerous souvenir patches from travels.  These are very thick. to thick for my machine to go over, so I just had to avoid those parts of the quilt. 

  The finished "blocks" were then appliqued to a piece of muslin, and batik fabrics were added as borders.

Since the shirts weren't interfaced, there was a lot of "wiggle room" in the shirts, and a few folds and wrinkles had to be incorporated, or flat out left in the final quilt.

It seems that someone spilled their drink when they were piecing.  There's a large brown stain on the muslin underlay.

You can see above that many of the fabrics were left intake, not trimmed to size.  Oh well!

There was interfacing, but I'm not sure it was fused to the shirts, or if it is a sew in interfacing.

 Some how, this phrase reminds me so much of my brothers and our friends from college

T-shirt quilt for Stan's wife, from their son's shirts

 Stan reached out to me about making a quilt for his wife for Christmas.  His sons are now both grown, but we've got shirts from when they were in high school, maybe grade school, and also college.  Clearly this is a very proud papa.

Two t-shirt quilts from Kristin

Kristin is a "new to me" customer, but I hope that we'll develop a long term friendship.  She even lives in my neighborhood.  

The first quilt is for her aunt who worked for the Portland Police.  But I also love the fishing shirts!

This one is my favorite.

 And a second quilt for her niece made from her sorority shirts.  I had to look closely at this one until I realized that it wasn't a concert shirt, but also from her sorority.