My mom and I began making a t-shirt quilt for my son Caleb at the end of the summer. He is usually in marching band after school, so we thought that would be a great time to put in lots of time on the quilt while he was busy. Well, since there were fewer performances this year, they decided to have marching band rehearsals only on Tuesdays and Thursdays! Tuesdays are my husband's day off, so I tried not to sew on those days. We did put in a lot of work on Thursday afternoons! Toward the end, we worked more often.
I found some directions on Pinterest (I can't find them anymore!) and we measured the shirt fronts, decided on 14" squares, bought fabric, and interfacing, and got to work! This picture shows the shirts laid out in a pattern on my Mom's spare bed after we ironed the interfacing on the shirt fronts.
Instead of working in rows (like we probably should have), we worked in columns. This was the first column sown together. My mom kept saying it is so long, but my son is 6'3", so I wanted it to cover him up in his bed!
The above picture was taken after the columns were finished. We had a snag with getting the shirts to line up in a row. I think I learned what we did wrong, but I didn't want to rip out everything. So my sister-in-law gave us an idea to stagger the rows so that it looked better. This was laid out to see how the staggering would look. I texted with my hubby sometimes to get his opinion.
This was when my mom and I were pinning the top and bottom edges on the quilt. It was fun to see it coming together!
After the top was sewn together, we took it to my mom's church to lay it out, cut the backing and the batting, and pin it together. Our system worked okay, but we did end up repinning it all on the kitchen floor at my mom's house. Then we 'stitched in the ditch' to quilt it. We talked about quilting across each t-shirt front but didn't want to take away from the shirt designs too much. The quilting was a hard part for me! It is not easy to squeeze a big quilt like that into a sewing machine. Even though it was the end of October, I was sweating while I sewed!
Then the COVID restrictions in our state became more strict, so I couldn't help my mom finish it as easily. My mom ended up finishing the quilting and then she worked on the binding edges. In the pictures below, the binding was not totally finished, which was fine with me. I knew it aggravated my mom's arthritis so we were patient with her. She finished it and gave it back to us about a week after his birthday.
At his party, he was very surprised and very touched by the quilt. He said, "Where did you get the shirts?!" I told him that I had secretly saved most of his shirts, which he didn't know. It added to the surprise a little more. A few of the shirts were ones that I found at Goodwill and the Arc store. They were shirts from teams he had been on and one from his high school.
It was so nice to be able to show my family. My hubby and oldest daughter had never seen it. Several people knew about it but everyone kept the secret well! My daughter Mallory did help us iron some of the shirts and the fabric after we sewed the seams.
I was talking about the shirts and when he wore them...
That hug made the work worthwhile! He was teary-eyed and kind of overwhelmed that we made this just for him!
Here is the quilt on his bed, it looks so nice! He said he really likes the weight of it and the length. I wanted the quilt backing to be dark in case he decided to use it later on sometime as a blanket to sit on the grass. I didn't want it to show lots of dirt!
The last touch was to put a patch on it from Mom. I tried to find another one that said Grandma but couldn't find one. She said that was okay. We were pleased with how it turned out! (and relieved that it was complete... it was a big job!) Here you can also see a close up of the fabrics that we used for the quilt edges and back.
Have you ever sewn a quilt for one of your kids? How was your experience? Let me hear about it!
Mark 2:21“No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse.
Judges 4:18Jael went out to meet Sisera and said to him, “Come, my lord, come right in. Don’t be afraid.” So he entered her tent, and she covered him with a blanket.
Isaiah 28:20The bed is too short to stretch out on, the blanket too narrow to wrap around you.
Posted by
No comments:
Post a Comment