I received the t-shirts for a special quilt, to be made for a friend’s daughter and son-in-law, in May, June or July last year. I was happy to make the quilt for them and started on it right away. My youngest daughter and I laid out all of the t-shirts on my bed, then photographed them. The recipient (and her mom) had to then decide what shirts to use in the quilt and what not to use. We went back and forth, paring down the shirts as we went along. This is one of the most painstaking parts of making a t-shirt quilt. There were way too many shirts for a queen-size quilt, plus my friend’s daughter was teeny-tiny and her husband a tad larger – which meant I could not make uniform blocks out of all of the shirts – I was going to have to border some of hers and use all of his. Then there were the small logos on the fronts of shirts and the larger t-shirt images on the backs – and the daughter wanted both the fronts and backs of those shirts used. Not impossible, of course, but somewhat awkward – especially if most of the fronts of the shirts were from her husband’s shirts and very few from hers.
This is a college Greek t-shirt quilt. The husband was in a fraternity and his wife (my friend’s daughter) was in a sorority. They met through their Greek associations, he pinned her with a lavalier (definition) from his fraternity and they married after they graduated from college. They wanted a t-shirt quilt to show how their college Greek ties brought them together.
I *finally* finished their quilt top this past week. I will admit, I did it under pressure. Our friends were driving to the big city near us and wanted to get together for a meal while they were in town. If possible, she also wanted to see the quilt top, if I had finished it. (ahem – blush) I forced myself to work on the quilt top for five straight days. Before I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, it was no biggie for me to be able to complete such a quilt top in a day or a weekend – but that just isn’t the case anymore. But, as we all know from the turtle and the hare, as long as I set daily realistic goals, I could make it. The biggest problem, however, was trying to photograph it when it was finished! It was too long (or our living room ceilings were too short) to get the entire quilt top in a photo. When I downloaded the photos I took, every single one of them had part of the bottom border folded over a tad on our carpet. I have now decided that when I’m finished with the quilt, we’ll have to move our base-of-photo-operations to either my MIL’s high deck on the back of her house (she calls it her treehouse porch) or hold it up in her living room. There’s no way to get the whole quilt in a photo from our house!
Another interesting factoid with this quilt became quite apparent when I was figuring in the final borders. I wanted the t-shirts to be front and center so they could easily be seen on a bed. Which meant the side borders had to be quite big (11″ each for the left and right borders). The top and bottom borders are much smaller (5″) because of the number of shirts that were placed in the center portion of the quilt top. I started cutting out those final borders and realized I may have miscalculated the fabric yardage I needed. I believe I initially purchased four yards of the fabric the daughter chose for her quilt top. Then I had one more yard that was in my own quilt fabric stash, and I needed to use it for the borders, too. When all was said and done and I had sweated through the lengths of the border strips I needed to make, this is how much fabric was leftover:
Whew, I really cut that close! Unfortunately, that 2 1/2″ x WOF strip is not enough to bind the quilt…nor is it enough to make an extra little special surprise for the married kids. I immediately sent a photo of the fabric to my local quilt shop, asking if they still had that fabric. Whew again – they did, and they even had enough so I could get two yards of it! I decided I didn’t want to make the binding out of the same fabric so I ordered a black fabric for the binding.
In the end, I just want the happy couple to use and love their quilt. That will bring me joy.
