Second son’s quilt: jeans & fleece.

I will post pix of this one soon, because this is yet another monstrous quilt like the t-shirt quilt.  I don’t know how I get myself started on these things.

Sew, I’ve been saving all of my boys’ jeans since they were tiny little tykes, and now that one is 21 and the other is 16, I’ve finally decided to make a quilt from them.  I’ll be giving this to younger son, but I think there’s still enough to make one for older son.  Assuming I don’t kill the sewing machine or something on the first one.

I actually started this one with a few facts, since I’d learned a bit on the t-shirt quilt (tho I somehow still ended up learning a few entirely new things):

• I didn’t want this quilt to have regular seams like a regular traditional quilt, with rough edges on the inside.  In short, I didn’t want to be sewing through four layers of denim.
• I also didn’t want it to look like Wip #3, which is a version of rag quilt.  Assembly for that would require fairly exact seaming, or once again I would be sewing through four layers of denim.  Ick.  Not happening.

That pretty much left me with only one option: some sort of flat layering of the denim.

Ok, I can do that.

I got a twin-sized quilt kit (2 twin sheets plus batting) with my new sewing machine last year, so I decided to use it for this quilt.  It actually fit my needs for this quilt perfectly.

The Back:

I wanted this to be fleece.  My son wanted orange and black (nothing to do with Halloween, those are just the colors he likes), so I was able to find grey fleece, orange fleece, and a plaid fleece with orange, grey and black in it.  I discovered during stitching that the plaid fleece is thinner than the solid fleece.

I cut the fleece into 6″ wide strips.  On the quilt-kit-sheet I used for backing, I drew lines at about 35-45-degree angles, every 6″.  That was interesting.  I think they ended up more or less aligned at top and bottom (oh, maybe I should have started drawing the lines in the middle…).  I actually sewed the fleece strips directly to the sheet (I don’t think they’re actually official sheets, but that’s about what they feel and look like – pretty low thread count, too.).

I pinned on the first row of fleece, letting the ends hugely overlap the edge of the sheet, figuring I’ll trim later.  I stitched the upper edge with a  large zig-zag stitch.  Then, I pinned the second row on, butting the edges together.  I zig-zag stitched across both rows, hopefully with a short enough stitch that the white sheet won’t ever show through.

The strips were not long enough to reach across the entire diagonal length of the sheet, so I butted another piece up when I reached the end of one, then after finishing the row I would return and stitch crosswise to get those two pieces zig-zagged together.  If I recall correctly, I cut these pieces somewhere in the 35-45 degree angle, always the same angle but sometimes in opposite directions (lean to the left, lean to the right…).

It was an interesting challenge to use only 3 fabrics without putting the same color next to itself.  I don’t think I was 100% successful, but I think I did a pretty good job and it really looks good.

Repeat about 12 gazillion times (or so it felt) and then it was done.  The stitching lines were not matching up to the drawn lines by the time I reached the bottom of the sheet (oh, maybe I should have started sewing the strips in the middle…).  But again, it looks good.

I cut the fleece so that every edge would overhang the sheet, for trimming purposes later.  Only once did I get an overhang stitched up under a subsequent row, so I’m pretty proud of myself about that (doing it only once, I mean).

The Front:

I laid the other sheet out on the floor where I could mostly see the whole thing, then just started layering down pieces of denim.  Under the pieces that were a full front jean including zip and snap, I would layer one of their old t-shirts (the zip/snap will stay operable).  I also made sure that one or two pairs of painter pants were included, since they tend to have the pockets with velcro (on the little boy version, at least).  I tried to get everything going in sort of the same direction, except for a few edges where I had to make do.

I used spray stick stuff to keep everything more or less in place until I could pin.  After pinning, I just used a straight stitch to nail it all down to the sheet.

Let me tell you, spray stick stuff and pins are NOT ENOUGH when working with denim.  I still had to readjust every single piece as I came to it.  Things ended up pretty much the same, but overlaps were not quite right in some areas (read: miniscule) and I will have to make sure that those seams get more quilting or some sort of wide decorative stitch that won’t freak out a boy (no flowers).

Not to mention, denim is HEAVY.  That thing weighs about five hundred pounds, front, back and batting.  I’m seriously considering removing the batting before I quilt it.  I doubt it would be missed.

Quilting It:

Ok, so the big thing now on this quilt is how to quilt it.  The quilting will probably disappear into the fleece on the backside (where it doesn’t get all bunched up – I think I’m going to need one of those teflon pads for my machine) (Omg, I think I’m going to have to have the kids help me hold the darn thing up so it doesn’t rip out the sewing machine needle, either).

I wanted to quilt some sort of pattern, but I really didn’t want a stipple or meander.  Stars and circles are good, simple designs related to computers or video gaming would be nice.  But, have to work it all around the zips/snaps and the hidden t-shirts.

So, I’ve decided to quilt it in a loose meander, with stars here & there, and maybe big circly loops, maybe big squares.  No way is this thing getting on a professional quilting machine, I’d be kicked out of the state for asking.  Need to work out with weights for about 6 months before starting the quilting on this one.  Or just carry the quilt around for an hour or two every day.

Binding:

My first thought is to put a straight or zig-zag stitch around the edges of the sheets to hold the batting in (heh…may not be an issue by the time I get to this point).  Then, just trim the hanging edges to about an inch or less, and let it all fluff up over time (there’s the rag edge).  I tried not to put any of the un-stitchable-over items at the edges because of this, but I think there’s one I’ll have to work around.

My second thought is to use the quilting, take it to the edge of the sheets, maybe a tad beyond, and let that be the binding.  I’d prob still have to strengthen it a bunch.  Still more thinking to do on this.

My third thought is to use fleece for the binding.  I wouldn’t be interested in double folding it at this point, but if I used the solid orange or grey, it’s prob thick enough to work just fine.  Might leave a ragged edge beyond the stitching –  oooh, I could use a 2″ strip of fleece, do a standard binding stitch on the back, folding corners and all that, pretend it’s the real stuff, fold it over and zig-zag on the top, catching the back edge in the zz stitch, then trim the top edge either at the zz stitch or a bit out for that ragged look.  Hmmm…kind of liking this idea.

Things I didn’t consider (things I learned):

• Weight of the denim
• How to quilt around zippers and snaps and velcro and hidden t-shirts
• How to edge it
• How necessary batting really is for a quilt like this

I’m sure I’ll learn much more when I quilt this one.

Back to the epic story.  You can also read Part 1 and Part 2.

Hiatus finally ended.  We moved, got moved in, got unpacked.  The movers did a great job.  There were about 4 of them unloading our numbered boxes while I checked them off the list and my mom started unpacking (thanks, mom!).  The only problem was, because there was about 4 of them and only one of me (DH was driving one of the cars because they would only move two cars, so he was still a few days away), and they didn’t want to sit around and wait for me to go through the list, sometimes they snuck in through the front door instead of the garage, and I didn’t get to check their boxes off my list.

Imagine my surprise when we finally got completely unpacked and the ONLY missing box was the one with my lovely extra fabrics for this quilt.  Can you believe it????

I had to go fabric shopping all over again!  Oh, the torture!

I tried to get the same fabrics, but I decided against the fishnet for round two, and don’t remember about the velour for sure, but didn’t end up with any of that, either.

My primary criteria for the extra fabrics was washability.  All of the extras got a round or two through the washer and dryer, and all of them performed perfectly.  I think they all have about zero natural components, so no shrinkage in moderate dryer.

Back to work on the layout.  I discovered that I actually have MS Publisher on my computer, and that it has drawing capability, of sorts, woohoo!  I got all my blocks laid out again, and this was much better for getting everything aligned.

Time to start sewing!

I started this project knowing I would have to somehow stabilize the t-shirts before sewing.  It may have briefly crossed my mind that I could use interfacing, but that didn’t quite seem like the right thing to do.  I wasn’t sure it would be strong enough.  Or, too easy, perhaps.

Ultimately, I decided to use a muslin backing.  Armed once again with my block layout, I cut a piece of muslin to go with each block, including the little fill-in blocks.  Because of the standardized block sizing, it was easy to cut strips from 4x wide muslin, then just chop them into the necessary lengths.

I was also able to find (maybe my subconscious made them) sub-blocks within the layout, so that I could get smaller groups of about 6 or 8 blocks assembled before putting the whole gigantic thing together (yes, gigantic).

We all know that fabric sort of sticks to itself or to others of like kind.  I felt that the t-shirts would sort of stick well enough to the muslin that I wouldn’t have any problems, and more or less I didn’t.  However, I did find out very quickly that, much as I didn’t want to, pinning was still necessary.

I also found out pretty quickly that some of the t-shirts were a bit stretched and distorted (worn and washed), meaning that they didn’t stick levelly to the muslin in the center.  I must say, this was just a bit weird to deal with.

About half way through assembly, I got the bright idea of using spray sticky stuff (something on the order of 505, tho I actually used June Tailor’s version) to hold the t-shirts and pretty fabrics to the muslin.  Things went much quicker and easier after that.  This was especially necessary for the silky lame.

I only made one mistake on size with my layout, so I feel pretty good about that, especially since it was a mistake I was able to easily fix by enlarging (cutting another) one of the extra fabric blocks.

About 3/4 of the way through assembly, I sort of ran out of steam.  Everything stopped for about a month, until DH let me know that he’d bought plane tickets for a visit back home & had promised the completed quilt would be coming with us.  I had 2 weeks to finish it.  Um…ok….

I actually found wide black backing at my new local Hancock Fabrics, wide enough to fit without having to seam it up.  Yay!  Got that washed up.  Got the last few sub-blocks finished up, then started putting the whole thing together.  Let me tell you, t-shirts and muslin and backing are HEAVY.

I was both stunned and amazed when everything pieced together just about perfectly.  You have this vision in the back of your head while you’re working, but when it actually works out that way, it’s all worthwhile.

The only problem I had was with the Ozzy shirt, which was the centerpiece of the quilt.  I had left the sleeves on it , and intended to use set-in seams to assemble it at the underarm parts.

Well, I’ve read about how to do set-in seams.  Watched videos on it.  Read more instructions.  It didn’t seem like it would be that hard — maybe awkward and exacting, but not hard.  It’s pretty basic, what you have to do.  But I couldn’t make it work.  I stitched that underarm corner and ripped it out about 3 times.  It kept folding wrong, or it wouldn’t stay in place for me to sew, or the pins got re-pinned in a different place while I was moving it to the sewing machine, or whatever.  Ultimately I decided that I should take advantage of the black t-shirt thing going on, and I folded under my 1″ allowance and top-stitched (appliqued) it to the adjacent blocks, on both underarms.  This at about 1:00 am.  And you can’t even tell!

Down to about 2 days before our flight.  Got the whole thing layered.  No time to do real quilting, so did a sort of in-the-ditch quilting on each block (black thread).  Not nearly enough, but maybe I’ll get it back one day to add some more.

Also managed to do a bit of in the block quilting for a few of the most interesting blocks, one of which was Ace’s (one of the KISS guys, the one with the tongue?) face about 2′ high.  I quilted that one and one or two others in white glow-in-the-dark thread.  Can you imagine waking up and seeing that in the middle of the night?  Heh…

Trimmed the edges, didn’t need to do much, things were pretty well aligned, I was again amazed to see.  I truly believe that things stayed so well in shape because of the muslin backing.  Great stuff.

I had BIL write a short sentence or two on each of the concerts I had a shirt for, then I printed this on iron-on stuff, then ironed it on to muslin, then attached it to the back of the quilt with more iron-on stuff and 1/4″ red ribbon around each one.  Those did not come out at all the way I wanted and I’m not happy with them, but the words are there and will most likely stay there until the end of time.

I scrambled around to find one of those Clover bias tape makers locally. I wanted the 2″ one, but I think the largest I was able to find in a store was the 1 1/4″ or 1 1/2″, so I had to go with that.  I cut and assembled my binding strips (456″ total) and ran them through whatever bias maker I ended up with.  I used a thick, glossy, black, slippery fabric.  Lots of polyester in it, so it didn’t get nice & flat like cotton binding does, but the creases pretty much stayed in after I ironed it.  I used those flat little hair clips that are multi-purposed to use instead of pins for quilts, which was probably the right thing to do.  The binding fabric was icky to work with, but the end result was about what I wanted, so ok.

I finished the quilt at about 2:30 am on the morning of our flight, which was leaving at 7:00 am.  We’re about 45 minutes away from the airport, so we were planning to leave home by about 5:15 am.  Yes, I did sleep on the plane.

Oh, btw, the quilt ended up at about 9′ wide by 10′ long.  I wanted to use ALL of the shirts.  And I think it also weighed about 80 gazillion pounds, tho the airline was kind enough to let me carry it on in that carryon suitcase I mentioned before. (There was NO way I was taking a chance on that thing becoming lost luggage!)

Oh, and I had to kneel on the suitcase to get it closed with the quilt inside.  The suitcase was a hard-sided Samsonite, sort of like this one but an older version so more square.  Small.  Carry-on size.  And the hard sides means no shoving it in through that one last inch before closing the zipper, or letting the sides bow out to contain the quilt.

While we were delivering the quilt, we got to talking about all the OTHER concert shirts BIL & SIL still had.  I’m not sure how this happened (beer/margaritas???), but I somehow brought back another suitcase full of t-shirts.

Ok, Part 2 of this epic saga.  Click for Part 1.

So there I was, in this tiny little condo, t-shirts carpeting the carpeting, sorting out my strategy.

My first task would be to get measurements of all the t-shirt designs.  I got out my trusty graph paper & pencil, and a ruler.  I logged a description of each shirt (that was interesting when I got to the multitude of KISS shirts) and the design size.  Some of the shirts had a front and a back, and I wanted to use everything I could, so I also logged those few back designs.

I was starting to formulate a plan in my head, so i transferred my measurements into a spreadsheet (Excel, if you must know, and I’m not proud of it).  To make this work, there had to be some sort of standardization with the block sizes, so here are the formulas I worked through:

• Entered actual design size, WxH, in inches, separate columns for front (W, H), back (W, H) and sleeve/pocket (W, H) – 6 columns in all
• Converted inches to feet (in retrospect, not exactly sure why I did this, except it may have made the formulas for the next step much simpler) (in no way shape or form am I admitting how much of a computer nerd I can be)
• Standardized design sizes to next largest increment of 1′, 1’3″, 1’6″, 2″, 2″3″.  Not sure how I ended up without any 1’9″, but probably just as well.  This calculation also added seam allowances, and I can’t quite figure out how my formula for that worked, but ultimately whatever it was that I did, it did what it was supposed to.  As I recall, I used a 1″ seam allowance for each side, knowing by now that I’d be working with some really weird issues & wanted a bit of wiggle room if necessary; I also wanted enough room to mend any blowouts since I was making this to be a used quilt, not a show quilt
• Converted everything back to inches (hmmm…) for the actual cutting

Once I got that all sorted out, it was time to start cutting.  I had put away the shirts while figuring out the calculations, so now I had to pull them out again.

Armed with my measurements, I got out my trusty cutting mat and rotary cutter, and started cutting.  With the adjusted measurements at hand, I cut the neck ribbing and sleeves off each shirt, being careful when the design came close to either.  I cut the shirt sides off, centering the design for the measurements I needed, then cut the top & bottoms off each shirt, again centering the design.

I had a vague thought of keeping the fronts and backs together during construction, so I kept the fronts with the backs for the time being.  The remnants went into a bag that I can’t find any more (we’ve moved since then – more on that later).

My next step was to fit the pieces together.  You might have thought I should have done this before cutting the t-shirts, but my logic at that point revolved around knowing I would be adding small extra blocks of those alternate fabrics I mentioned before, which gave me a certain amount of flexibility, plus I knew that I had standardized block sizes, so I felt certain that I would be able to fit it all together.

First, I drew out each block on my graph paper.  I labeled them and cut them out, then started moving them around on another piece of graph paper.  I probably fiddled around with this off and on over the course of a month or two, with the shirts once again put away.  I added the few extra blocks I thought I would need, but I also found that since I had sort of winged it with my graph paper measurements, I wasn’t quite getting the layout I knew I needed.

So, I set that aside in favor of something fun: purchasing all the extra fabrics!  I found most of the extras here.  I also found a few slippery things at my local Hancock Fabrics, Joann’s, etc. You must admit, you wouldn’t find most of these fabrics at your LQS:

• Liquid Lame in silver/grey; working with this was like trying to herd cats
• Flame Fur in red, I believe, hideous to work with
• Velour I think I got some of this, but more on that later
• Wave Velveteen which is stiff and also hideous to work with, but I’m glad I used it
• Fishnet I got this in pink, and I think in either black or white, planning to layer it over something else, but more on that later

I also thought about using some vinyl, but couldn’t quite bring myself to go that far.

Ok, so I had all the extra fabrics.  The layout method wasn’t working well; I was using 4 graph paper squares to equal a foot, so it was tough to accurately cut the 3″ and 6″ parts.

In the meantime, my younger son had decided to go live with his dad, and DH and I had decided to relocate several states over, so the condo had to be in pristine condition 24/7.

The t-shirt went on hiatus for about 6 months.

Click here for post-hiatus wrap-up.

So my biggest recent claim to fame (in my own mind) is a t-shirt quilt I made for BIL & SIL recently (about 2 years ago).  I see lots of questions about how to make t-shirt quilts, and I decided to post my experience here, because there are certainly lots of things that everyone else can learn not to do.

Since this quilt was probably only the second “real” quilt I’d ever made, I sort of waded into the whole project without understanding all of the little bits & pieces I should have figured out first, so would have to say that I learned a lot making this quilt! (I posted a quick note about my sewing experience here (click me) for frame of reference.)  Personally, I think this is the best way to start a project, because otherwise you may end up feeling overwhelmed and never start, and then you don’t have wonderful stories like this one to tell.

Basically, my BIL & SIL are rock concert fanatics, and so have collected concert t-shirts for at least 12 years.  We were discussing them one day (over beers/margaritas, if I recall correctly) & I got the bright idea that I could make a quilt out of the t-shirts.  Should be easy, right?  Cut up a bunch of shirts and slap ‘em together, right?  Riiiight.

Well BIL & SIL sorted through all of their concert t-shirts (I’m foreshadowing here, can you tell?), and I actually ended up taking home a small suitcase (carry-on size) full of concert t-shirts.  That was quite a surprise, but I actually was looking forward to it.  DH and I & my younger son were, at the time, occupying his 2-bed/2-bath dinky little condo downtown (galley kitchen about the size of a real galley), so the first challenge became immediately apparent.

DH is averse to what you might kindly call “clutter.”  I’m not averse to it, and in fact approach it as a necessary part of what most of us call “life” (universe in a state of decay & all that, who am I to defy the universe?).  However, since he gets more stressed by “clutter” than I do from the lack thereof, we do our best not to contribute to the mes–er, “clutter”.

This meant that any work/sewing I did on the quilt would have to be, well, really fast, or very well organized or something.  And since I knew I would have to do some of the work on the dining table (note I didn’t say dining “room” table) & DH is also averse to eating dinner where work is in progress, I had to be even more super fast or super efficient or super something.  And I have to say, in retrospect, he was tolerant of the “clutter” quite outside his normal boundaries.

So I finally started investigating these shirts.  I got them all laid out on the living room floor (wasn’t enough room, I tell you) (there were a LOT of them).  I saw that my next challenge with these shirts was going to be that every rock band has a different size of logo.  One Ozzy shirt was completely covered, front and back.  Other shirts had your standard, everyday iron-on rock band logo on the front or back.  Still other shirts had only a small logo (less than 6″X6″) on a sleeve or pocket.

The good thing about these t-shirts is that they were all black.

Then I discovered there was actually one non-black t-shirt in the group, some baseball shirt.  It was actually white.  Didn’t fit the theme at all, but it was some player that BIL thought was great, so ultimately I decided (with help from DH) that I would work it in as a one-off (oh, I just checked my records, and it was Will Clark from the SF Giants).  There was also a Charlie Daniels concert shirt, but since it was black, I felt much more relaxed about working it in.  And there were about six different KISS shirts (yes, they went to at least that many KISS concerts, I’m betting they went to more); I would have to find a way not to put those next to each other.  And then there was one other band that had about that many shirts, I’ll have to see if I remember which one, but basically, there were two bands that I would have to keep separated.

Ultimately I saw that if I made all the blocks the same size, i would lose many of the design edges on the larger designs, and the tiny designs would be lost in the larger block size.  What to do, what to do?

I thought about this for a few minutes.  Here’s what I knew at this point:

• This wasn’t going to be your ordinary t-shirt quilt
• I wanted to somehow incorporate some fancy fabrics, things with flames or skulls, and red, and shiny, and velvety, maybe something that looked like a mesh stocking — you know, rock music themed stuff
• I wanted the backing to be black, and I didn’t want to have to sew together 2 pieces of fabric if I didn’t have to
• I wanted the binding to be black satin (or red, but probably black)
• I didn’t want sashing between the blocks (too much corner matching involved in that)

From this, I gathered that I was going to have to design a custom layout.

Ok, on to Part 2.

During the interim (patterns are heading briefly in a slightly different direction, have to sort that out), a bit on my sewing resume.  Important for putting my sewing comments into context, I think.

Mom taught me to sew when I was a wee child (somewhere around 2nd grade).  She said that if I hand-cross-stitched this very cute little apron (blue and white gingham, cross-stitching on each check to make flowers or something, and thin blue ribbons for the ties), she would get me a child-sized sewing machine (I believe it was a Singer, something like the Sew Smart Mini).

Sew, I stitched the apron (one of us may actually still have it around somewhere, seems I’ve seen in in the last decade or so) and got the sewing machine.

I loved that machine!  It was electric, but it had a wheel I could crank to lower the needle (just like mom!), and I could reach through the arm (barely) to lift the presser foot lever (just like mom!).  I may have actually even made something with it, tho I don’t remember for sure.

After that, I did a bit of sewing off & on through high school (mostly off), then after kids, halloween costumes (on!), then my own halloween costumes (off & on).  Made a little quilted pillow cover, even put a zipper on it, and I’m still proud of that thing, no puckers, got the directional print lined up perfectly, no pattern, and I even put a ruffled edge on it.  Very kewl!  Did the obligatory hemming of Ikea curtains.

Sew, at some point I decided to make quilts for the kids.  These were actually WOF wholecloth quilts, not pieced or anything.  I took a cute fabric, generally fleece or corduroy, stuck a little batting in the middle, put matching flannel on the back, turned over the top edges to the back for binding, did a little stitching (usually not enough, but the kids didn’t care) and called it done.  These were fun to make, & I made several of them over the years.

I now have that little Wild Ginger program for making pants — well, shorts.  Not quite ready to make pants.  Might make some capris if the shorts work out well, which they look to be, as soon as I get myself a tailor’s ruler (that curvy one that looks like something for calculus).

I also managed to get one of those Golden Mean pattern book sets.  Well, actually, two.  You know how it sometimes goes on Ebay…tho I guess that’s a different story.

And you can read about my t-shirt quilt for greater detail on my sewing process — apparently I didn’t follow the standard procedures for that.

In a nutshell, I’m not your resource for technical information, but if you want opinions, I have plenty of those, and for a great price!