Quick and Easy Sweatshirt Blanket

I spent a few hours last week making a surprise for the recipient of the t-shirt quilt I shared recently.  When she gave me her t-shirts, she included several items I couldn't use due to their weight or the type of fabric.  I knew I wanted to do something with them, though.  I decided I'd use the  sweatpants, hoodie and flannel pajama bottoms to make a lap sized blanket.

Shhh!  My assistant wanted me to crop her out.  But she's just too cute! 

It came together really easily!  I just cut the largest sized rectangle that I could get out of each item of clothing, centering the logos.  I cut rectangles from spots with no logo, too .  Then, I laid them out, trimming and rearranging until I had something that worked.

When the blocks were together, I spray basted the top to a yard of snuggle fleece.  A little bit of stitching in the ditch holds the front and back together, permanently.   I finished it off by bringing the edge of the fleece around to the front, turning it under once, then stitching with a running stitch.

Binding clips = no pins in the carpet!!

  I am so pleased with the way the binding looks!

My favorite feature, though, is the pocket from the front of a Hoodie that I included at the top.  It's placed in exactly the right spot for the user of the blanket to tuck her hands into in chilly weather.

This is NOT the recipient of the quilt.  Just my cute assistant, again.

If Hailey  decides not to take this blanket to school with her this fall, I know her mom will put it to good use.  It's perfect for snuggling under by the fire, watching football games on chilly Friday nights, or just to cuddle with while reading  (and, I'm sure, missing her oldest child).  

I'm going to link this post up, but I'm not sure where.  What are your favorite link up parties?

So far, I'm linked at Monday Making at Love, Laugh, Quilt, and Let's Bee Social at Sew Fesh Quilts

Have a fantastic week, quilty friends!

Two Finishes!

It's county fair week here!  My absolute favorite week of the summer.  So far, we've been to the fairgrounds for the judging of the girls' projects, to work an early morning shift in the 4-H Food Stand, and to watch my oldest daugther model her outfit in the Fashion Revue (no judging this time, just a chance for the girls to show off their hard work).  There might have been some ice cream, lemonade and other treats thrown in there too!  We'll be back later today to volunteer in the 4-H Action and Promotion booth and to enjoy the rides on Friday.  Maybe, just maybe, my husband and I will go to listen to some music for a Friday night date.

Even with all this Fair Frenzy, I'm happy to have two finishes to report!

This is my lovely daughter modeling, not the owner of the quilt.

My first T-Shirt Quilt is finished!  This has been a true labor of love for me.  The owner of these shirts is a young lady that I've had the pleasure of watching grow her entire life.  She is near and dear to my heart, and my girls think of her as an older cousin.  My daughter has shared the stage in many of the shows that these t-shirts represent, so I had a lot of memories and smiles as I stitched.

Since this was the first t-shrit quilt I've completed, it wasn't without its struggles.  It was quite a challenge getting all the blocks to fit nicely together,  You can read a post about that, here.

This quilt is larger and heavier than I'm used to.  This presented some challenges in quilting.  I had decided to go with straight diagonal lines in both directions after seeing a t-shirt quilt done this way, somewhere on the internet.  I taped off my lines, adjusted them a time or two, and hoped for the best!

The center sections puckered a bit.   It was just really hard to keep everything flat and pulled tight when half of the quilt had to be fed through the throat on my small machine.

 I did some ripping and re-stitiching and got those sections to a place I could live with, I admit, debated ripping everything and starting over. But, there was a deadline to meet.  And, I asked myself if a quilt that lies perfectly flat was really the goal.

The answer was no.  This quilt is going to spend much of its existence crumpled up at the foot of a dorm bed.  It's going to be spread out on the lawn for campus picnics and study sessions.  It's going to go to football games and fireworks displays.  It's going to a part of college memories, forever.   It already holds so many memories and so much love that it's (not literally!) near to bursting at the seams...so perfection isn't necessary.

I had the pleasure of attending the recipient's graduation party, where the quilt was hung up along with pictures of the young lady.  What a joy it was to watch her grandmothers and aunts ooooh and ahhhh over it and to hear the kids from the perfoming troupe reminisce over the shirts. They didn't see mistakes or puckers or imperfections.  They saw love, hard work and happy memories.  That's as close to perfect as I need to get!

Here's a shot of the quilt label.  Doesn't the design on the label look fantastic with the backing fabric?  I even like the way the colors show through.  It's kind of a neat effect.   I used StoryPatches for the first time.  If you aren't familiar with this fun way to add a modern, techy touch to your quilts, I suggest that you check them out.  I also plan to do a post very soon explaining how easy it was to use technology to add a very special message to the quilt.

And now for my second finish.  I made a skirt!

I've mentioned before that my daughter is becoming a better garment sewer that I am.  It's just not my favorite thing to do. She, on the other hand, likes the process and patiently completed a skirt and a blouse for the fair this year.  For her skirt, she followed an on-line tutorial with the promising title "Twenty Minute Skirt".  Now, I think we all know that the darn skirt is going to take most of us longer than 20 minutes!  But, she did manage to have it done in just over an hour. Still pretty good!

 This week, I was inspired to follow the same process to finally sew up a skirt for myself from this cute knit I'd found a while ago.

This had to be done in several short sessions as time allowed this week, but, I think I probably spent just over an hour total.  I was careful to match those chevron stripes at the side seams, and I am just tickled with how they turned out! Hard to spot the seam, isn't it??

Its very basic construction.  Just a hemmed rectangle made into a tube, zig zagged to waist band elastic which is left exposed.  They make really cute elastic for that purpose, now.  Did you know that? There's not much work here, hence the 20 minute claim!

My skirt is comfortable, easy to wear, and just a bit longer than the rest of my knit skirts, which was the goal.  I'm going to be on the lookout for cute knits, now, so I can make a few more of these!  I'd forgotten how fun it is to wear homemade!

I'm linking up this week to Let's Bee Social, Needle and Thread Thursday, Can I Get A Whoop-Whoop? and Finish It Up Friday.

Be sure to stop back tomorrow for a County Fair edition of Five Things to be Happy About Friday!

My First T-Shirt Quilt

About a year ago, I was asked by a dear friend to make a t-shirt quilt for her daughter's high school graduation.  The graduation just happened, this year, so I had plenty of time.  However, the shirts came to me in batches.  Lots of small batches. A few here and a few there as they found them, or fininished wearing them, or even just acquired the ones from the last year!   It was hard to get an idea how to start cutting them without knowing  how many, what size,  and what colors.

All of the shirts were collected from performances that  my friend's daughter had been in.  Since she was in 5th grade, this young lady has been part of a show choir type performing troupe, made up of kids age 8 - 18.  We started started going to her shows when my daughter was small, and she caught the bug!  She's been a part of the group too, for the last 5 years.  So, I have my own memories attached to many of the shirts included in the quilt, which has made it kind of a special project.   I'm sure I'll be seeing some of these designs again, when I make my own daughter's quilt, about 5 years from now!  ( Actually, she says she plans to make her own.  Can I ask for that in writing???)

As soon as the last performance of the season finished, in April, I had all the shirts in my possession. Close to 30 of them!  Originally the recipient wanted to have all the shirt fronts cut to the same size, and sashed with white. However, after measuring the largest design and doing the math, I realized that plan would result in a nearly queen sized quilt.  Larger than any of us wanted!!  Plus, because the shirts ranged in size from really, really small to adult medium, it was going to be hard to get blocks the same size from every shirt!

So I sorted and measured, sketched and measured again, and came up with a plan we agreed on.

I was even able to incorporate some of the shirt backs -the cool ones with everybody's names.  Then, the real work started.  Each t-shirt got its interfacing and was cut to the appropriate size, according to the plan.

I mentioned that I measured twice, right?  Maybe I should have made that three times, because, umm, see the gaps?

Oh well. There were still some backs left.  I made some long skinny strips of names, and filled in. Not a mistake, a design element!

It's together, now, as a top.  I'm not completely happy.  I need to unsew a few seams and line up some sections more accurately.  The thickness of the interfacing, I think, or maybe the weight of the quilt made it hard to keep a consistent seam allowance.  I will resew tomorrow night  (after spending the day watching my daughter perform with this group at the opening day of Summerfest  - The world's largest music festival!)

The quilt will need a good squaring up and, I've decided to add top, bottom and side borders, just to set the shirts off a bit.  I met the recipient and her mom last night to choose a fabric for the borders and back, and I'm really happy with it! I wasn't sure we'd find something that worked with all the oddball colors of the shirts, but I think we did it!

This is a Brother Sister Design from Hobby Lobby, and it has a very nice feel to it.  Plus, it was very reasonably priced.

Wish me luck as I baste, quilt and bind!  This is a larger quilt than I'm used to.  The graduation party is on July 25, but a small, stubborn part of me still believes that I can have it finished in time for the end of the Second Quarter Finished Along on July 7.  Hmmm.  We'll see.

Linking up with Silly Mama Quilts WIP Wednesday, Sew Fresh Quilts Let's Bee Social