Hubby's T-Shirt Quilt - D to the O to the N to the E

Yep, I'm a nerd. Moving on.

I actually finished this in April and forgot to add it to my 'finished projects' list.

It is now at home amongst the beagles & cats that reside on our sofa. We get to use it occasionally too. :)

T-shirt Quilt has been quilted!

This was a blast!! My very first quilt using Daisy.
I knew exactly how I wanted to quilt the non t-shirt part of it so I drew lines with this nifty little chalk tool I picked up at a nearby sewing machine shop, seriously cool shop by the way, if you're ever in Denver you MUST check it out! Aaaanyway, I digress. So I drew the lines on the quilt which actually took a lot longer that I thought and caused some minor shoulder strain holding up the ruler but I persevered and completed it. Whew.

I am SO stoked on how that part of the quilting turned out. It was worth every aching muscle of marking. :) I didn't really think about the t-shirt quilting other than I knew I was going to stitch in the ditch around each one. Some t-shirts turned out better than others. There are some that flat out just look like scribbles and I have no idea how to make them better so I'm just going to leave it...pretty sure it's going to end up as a cat bed for the majority of it's time so no sweat off my brow? back...what's that saying..aaaaanyway...moving on. 

I'm not a big fan of the whole meander quilting but I gotta tell you that it is a very essential tool in quilting. It really helps make other parts look good and I surprisingly got the hang of it pretty quickly. I used it on a lot of the shirts and probably should have used it on the ones that look like scribbles. So now I know. Meander is your friend. 

It is pretty heavy so I wasn't able to hang it up anywhere to photo so I laid it on the bed and balanced above it on a vanity to take a lopsided photo. The only thing left to do on this bad boy is to add the binding and get the hubs to take some decent shots of it. I hope he likes (& USES) it. 

T-Shirt Quilt top for the Hubs

I finally finished the quilt top for my husband that I started last June. 

It was long enough back in June but wasn't quite wide enough so I had to get a few more t-shirts and filled in with some photos I had printed by Spoonflower. He doesn't know about those.

Kitty photos

Baby & Doggies

Design element ;)

I have volunteered the T-shirt quilt to be the first quilt to be quilted on Daisy. It's going to be pretty simple, just stitching in the ditch around each t-shirt and I'm going to try and see if I can do an echo around the AC/DC design element above that will run through the entire background fabric. It looks pretty cool in my head. We'll see if I can actually pull it off. 

A little something for my hubby

Last fall as I was in the midst of quilting craziness I asked my husband if he would be interested in having a quilt. He didn't seem that interested until I mentioned taking a lot of his unworn t-shirts and making them into a quilt. He really liked that idea. Which is really good since coming up with gift ideas for him is really tricky. So this year I was planning on making him a quilt for father's day as a surprise. He'd picked out the t-shirts months ago and I've been working on it clandestinely when he's not around.

All of the logos/designs/what-have-you on the t-shirts are different sizes so trying to pick one standard size to cut each t-shirt wasn't an option. This was  a piece it as you go project and the layout changed many many times as I was working through it.

I have to admit that I'm not really a big fan of t-shirt quilts. Visually they just aren't that appealing to me. 

I suppose that's not why you make them though. It's all about the memories the t-shirts evoke. This one is  coming together pretty well and I'm really digging it. 

As I was working on finishing up putting on the blocks together I took a risk and laid the quilt out on our bed so that I could more easily measure and figure out how to put the last few blocks on. I figured I was safe since my husband was in the basement watching TV and would likely remain there for the rest of the evening. Went back into my sewing room, sewed some more and came back out to the bedroom to find my husband staring down at the quilt. DOH!! All my secretive sewing was for naught. I told him it was supposed to be a surprise for father's day and he wondered why it was laying out in plain sight. Blah blah blah. The most important thing that came from that discussion was that he loved it. He even said "I love it". Which from a man is pretty huge I think. :)

He wanted to add one more t-shirt to it so it won't get done by father's day since my sewing time during the work week is minimal, which is fine since now I don't have to break my back to finish it by next weekend.