I'm finally back from camp. I spent a week in the mountains camping with hundreds of teenage girls from our church in my area. It was really fun, but boy did I miss my kids and modern conveniences - like a flushing toilet!
On with the tutorial
This is the biggest project I've worked on since having my second baby. It was a lot of work, but I absolutely love how it turned out. I finished it just before leaving for camp so I'm just now getting around to sharing it.
Do you have a ton of t-shirts that you want to turn into a memory quilt? Here's how I made mine...
First I started by cutting off the neck and sleeves of all the shirts.
I figured that the squares would be 14" based on the t-shirt with the biggest design.
Once I had all the t-shirts cut out, I laid them down and played with their placement and I realized I wanted something in between the squares.
So I did some planning. The friend I made this for wanted it more like a lap blanket than a bed quilt. So my dimensions were approximately 60" x 70". I wrote out the pattern of the colors and then came up with the idea for the part in between each square.
I used some scrap cardboard to make templates for the different pieces. A 3" square for the center of inner border. There other template is 14" x 6" to make two strips of the inner border.
More cutting
Here is the tentative pattern after cutting all the pieces out.
And even more cutting....every piece is backed with medium weight fusible interfacing. I cut all the pieces of that and then ironed it on to the back. The interfacing gives the t-shirts a bit more weight and also prevents them from stretching too much when sewing them together.
So finally you'll get to the sewing. Basically I worked in rows. I started at the top and worked to the right. You'll put the right sides together and sew them.
I used about a 1/4" seam allowance, or just lined it up with my presser foot.
Once a line was sewed together I turned them over and ironed the seams down to keep it from being too bulky.
Here is the finished quilt top. Naturally with a 4x4 pattern, it turned out to be a square. So I had to add a little to the top and a little to the bottom to make it more of a rectangle.
Here is what happens when I tried to work on it while my kids are awake...hehe
Anyway, here's my solution. I added half a square to the top and bottom along with the inner border.
Ta da!
If only it were done with that. I finished it off with an outer border.
I took grey fleece about 7" wide and 2 1/2 yards long and sewed to the edges.
I made my first attempt at mitered corners. They're actually really easy. So fold diagonally so that the fabric from the two sides line up.
Line up a straight edge with the edge of the fabric and mark to create a continuous line.
Pin and sew along this line.
Once the corners are done, you can cut off the excess fabric on each of the corners.
This is the backing I made. To close the quilt I sewed around most of the blanket with the right sides facing and then flipped it inside out.
Lastly, I top stitched it and tied the quilt.
I'll have a separate tutorial on tying the quilt for another day.
Et Voila!
Like I said, I'm so happy with how it turned out. Now I just have to get up the courage to make one for myself.
thank you Pinterest!
