Not Your Ordinary T-shirt Quilt #3
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.
