Celtic T-Shirt Quilt

For quite some time now, I've been shuffling a stack of t-shirts from my winter clothing storage to my summer clothing storage and back again.  And each time I would think, some day I'll make something out of these things.  My first ever machine-sewn project was a striped turtle-neck shirt with a snap-in crotch (which would keep it tucked in nicely, but caused oh so much trouble when trying to go pee after drinking that first beer!!) which required me to know so much more about sewing than I was willing to learn.  Not sure that shirt ever did get finished, but I'm 100% positive that if it did, I didn't do the sewing!!  I do sew.  Sometimes.  It requires patience I rarely have and knowledge I've yet to gain.  I do however have an awesome sewing machine.  And I have used it to do more than repairs.  At one time I was sewing all of my youngest daughter's pants.  When she was two.  And the requirement was only two pattern pieces and a gathered waist.

So the fact that I've had a "sewing project" packed away for over ten years is no surprise to anyone, least of all me or my sisters.  But now I have a daughter who wants very much to learn to sew and I am in no way skilled enough to teach her.

Enter the third sister, Sandra, who learned to sew in High School and has mastered the art to such a degree she could be the Home Ec teacher now.  She tried in vain to teach me to sew years and years ago and was smart enough not to repeat the process more than once.  In fact, her lessons are what spurred me on to buy the multi-colored striped ultra-shiny synthetic fabric for that ill-fated turtleneck. There's a reason I dropped out of High School and opted instead to just take the GED test, namely no Home Ec requirement!

But I digress...

My sister was visiting last November so I asked her to help Sheli learn to sew by making a quilt out of my stack of t-shirts.  With all the running back and forth for her and a spur of the moment trip out of town for me along with the fact that Sheli lived a good half-hour away, we got a good start on it, but it had to be set aside for the Holidays and I ended up finishing it just this week.  So...

I washed and ironed all the t-shirts I thought I wanted to use in my quilt top.  Then we used the first one to make a "pattern" for the blocks.  You need to know how much of the printed area you're going to use and that determines the size of your blocks.  For instance, most of my t-shirts were printed on either the front or the back.  Only two had large printed areas on front and back.  And only one had print on the front with a small logo on back.  We determined that the largest square would be 18 inches and used that for a pattern.

 The absolute best way to make your cuts is with a rotary knife and pad, using a big block ruler to keep everything straight and square.  Even so, you will still have problems with the fabric stretching a bit and the cut edges will curl up.  Depending on where the print is on the shirt, and because you will need to add at least 3/4" to all sides for your seam allowance, you may have to cut into the neck and arm seams initially, but you can trim those off later.
And all those scraps can be used to make a really neat rag rug that I plan to attempt eventually and will post photos of here as well.

Once you have all the blocks cut out, it's a good idea to lay them all out on a flat surface and "place" them where you think you want them to go on the quilt.  You will find that certain colors clash or that you have too much of the same color together.  Also, some of the printed areas will be really small and some really large, so you need to try to balance the print as best you can.
Five of my t-shirts had really small printed areas leaving a LOT of blank fabric.  So, I folded them in half and put two together to make one block.  One of them I left in the original size, but took the logo off the back and sewed it on top of the block alongside the picture.
Doing the "dry fit" will enable you to see what the finished size will be and help you make adjustments so that everything fits and is in balance.

 I used really long dress maker's pins to hold the squares together.  I pinned the cut shirts together making three long columns.  Then I sewed the center column first, placing the right sides together and sewing the bottom of the first block to the top of the one that would come below it.  Once I had the center sewn into a strip, I laid everything back onto my flat surface (I had to use my bed because my table is round and the strips kept falling off the sides and the floor has an accumulation of dog hair that I really didn't want sewn into my quilt!) to make sure that the columns ended evenly and the overall flow of the patterns worked.
I knew my finished quilt would end up a bit more than lap-sized but smaller than twin.  I used a queen-sized flat bed sheet for the back and quilt batting for the middle.  I don't hand-quilt, nor do I have a machine that quilts, so my only option (unless I want to pay someone to quilt for me) is to hand-tie it.  My batting called for ties to be 4 to 6 inches apart and I tried to incorporate them into the printed areas where they would show least.
I folded the backing flat sheet forward to make my quilt binding and used a forest green embroidery thread to sew it down.  I never have any luck with mitered corners so I folded the edges down with one side overlapping the other and hand-sewed the ends closed.
Some of the squares shifted just enough to make them slant a bit and some of the blocks still have way too much solid color.  But all in all, I'm pleased with the final product and will get so much more use out of the shirts now than ever I would have when they were stacked in the bottom of the closet.