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.

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