Make my T-shirt quilt

now i’m just waiting for my friend’s mom to sew them together.
then i have to buy some sort of background fabric, sew that.
this is very time consuming ha.
but it will be awesome. 2 years ago

the weekend with a friend and we saw some amazing quilts. My friend used to make quilts to order for people and has offered to help me make a quilt. I told her about my goal to make a t-shirt quilt and she wants to make one as well for her husband. She has a bunch of his old concert t-shirts from the 70’s that he was just going to throw out and she held onto them. This be alot of fun. I’m very much looking forward to this. 3 years ago

quilt show with a friend in a couple weeks. Hopefully I can get some ideas so I can get started with this one. 3 years ago

I finished up the final seam tonight while watching Garden State. It feels good to be done, finally! 4 years ago

Got me about halfway to where I need to be. The seam isn’t perfect, but it seems sturdy. I no longer feel the need to put on a label; I can do that much later and it is not critical to calling the project finished. 4 years ago

Putting the quilt on the bed has not helped my motivation to finish it. It works already, it looks nice, it keeps me warm, I can’t see the unfinished seam if I tuck it under the mattress. So why finish it?

Because I said so, that’s why! Tonight, really. 4 years ago

I haven’t closed up the final seam just yet, but I’m hoping to get to it by the end of the year. It just seems appropriate, since I started it in early January of this year.

The fact that it’s not quite finished has not kept me from using it on my bed. It works quite nicely (keeps me warm!) but the cats keep peeing on it! I am not sure what to do about this – it’s not good for the quilt to be washed very often, it’ll wear it out more quickly – but I don’t really want to display it anywhere else than on the bed. I’m wondering if there’s some sort of treatment I can apply to it to deter the kitties from peeing on it without deterring them from snuggling with me at night…. 4 years ago

But I put the quilt on the bed anyway. I’m hoping that seeing it all the time will motivate me just to finish it off. 4 years ago

so my consequence is to get rid of all the t-shirts I’ve been saving for a second t-shirt quilt. I will put them into my donations bag tonight.

It’s kind of silly that I haven’t finished; for three weeks all I’ve had left to do is sew up the final side. I’d like to make a label at some point, but it wasn’t part of my criteria for finishing.

Also, it’s kind of sad that there’s no notification whatsoever when you’ve failed a challenge. It doesn’t put the consequence you’ve chosen onto your 43T list or anything. 4 years ago

I did finish the knotting yesterday, after all. What’s left is to close up the bottom seam, at which point I can start using the quilt. Then I need to make and sew on a label, and I’ll be done. 4 years ago

Thanks to some work I did today and Wednesday. And I’ll be spending about 4 hours at a Stitch and Bitch session tomorrow. (Unfortunately, it’ll go slower there since I won’t have my handy table set up, and it’s not like I can work on this for 4 hours straight, so I doubt I’ll actually finish…)

The end is in sight! 4 years ago

I worked for an hour on knotting the quilt. At this rate, I have about 6 more hours of knotting left to go. 4 years ago

Yesterday I spent a few hours and finished off the first pass of knots, so now the entire extent of quilt has been knotted. Now I need to go back and do another set of knots in between the existing ones so that the knot density is higher.

Fortunately, the second pass will take slightly fewer knots than the first pass did, so I am over halfway done with the knots. I have definitely been getting faster at it. I think I could finish all the knots by next weekend if I tried hard. In addition to that, I still need to finish off the bottom seam and make/add a quilt label. I might put off those last two because they are things I could do at the Stitch and Bitch next weekend. 4 years ago

I spent a few hours today tying knots, and I’m making noticeable progress. I think it’s going slightly faster between the table I have set up and the fact that I’m not measuring the knot placement as carefully. I stopped by Joann and got some [very cheap] remnant fabric for the quilt label. I was not able to find freezer paper (for feeding fabric through the printer) at the grocery store or at Joann, so I will have to try Target or somewhere else.

I should have a few hours to spend on the quilt tomorrow and also Monday. I am hoping by then to have tested printing out a quilt label, in addition to making lots of headway on the knots. 4 years ago

Time to kick my efforts into high gear! I want to finally finish this goal, so I am setting myself an official challenge to finish in about a month, by the end of September. If I don’t, my consequence will be to get rid of all the t-shirts I’ve been saving for my “next” t-shirt quilt (or t-shirt pillow, or whatever.) The rationale here is that if I can’t finish my first quilt in a reasonable time, I shouldn’t even think about making another one in a far distant future. 4 years ago

I haven’t worked on it at all in a couple weeks. Just no motivation, you know?

It will probably have to wait until the Stitch and Bitch session in a couple weeks before I get motivated again. 4 years ago

But I did work some on my tutorial series over at LiveJournal.

I never expected this tutorial to get so detailed (it takes a long time to write!) I hope it ends up helping somebody.

ETA: OK, so after I made this post, I did work on the quilt for awhile. 15 more knots! It took over an hour. 4 years ago

about 300 more to go.

At least I figured out a different knotting pattern, reducing the number of total knots by about 50%. 4 years ago

1. Hand tie the quilt. 672 knots!
2. Close the rest of the seam on the bottom of the quilt.
3. Add a label, essentially “signing” the quilt.

Seems like I’m almost done but I know these three steps are going to take a lot of work. I’ve only got a month left! 4 years ago

For some reason, I have been very motivated to work on my quilt this weekend. I pieced together the backing, laid out and pinned together the quilt sandwich, and started sewing the seams around the edge. I ran out of thread today but was able to make it to the fabric store to get some more.

By the time the weekend is over, I am hoping to finish off the edge seams, turn the sandwich right-side-out, and re-pin the quilt sandwich in readiness for the hand-tying. I figure I’m going to need to tie 672 knots. That’s a lot, and could take awhile. I’ll have to work hard if I want to finish by my goal date of July 1. 4 years ago

I finally bought them yesterday, thanks to DH. Without him there I don’t I would ever have been able to choose a fabric. I am very happy with what we ended up getting, blue stripes. This way we can use the T-shirt quilt as a reversible bed covering.

I’ll post pictures later.

ETA: photo 4 years ago

With some prompting, I have started to record a more detailed description of the steps I took to make my t-shirt quilt. For anyone that’s interested, it’s over at my LiveJournal blog. Further installments to follow. 4 years ago

on Friday, but just couldn’t decide what kind of fabric(s) to get for the backing. I also didn’t like the batting choices that were available. I need to think about this a little bit more. 4 years ago

I was just going through some of my first entries on 43Things (a blast from the past) and I realized that my first post on this goal was July 1, 2005. Nearly two years ago! I had better step things up – I definitely want to finish by July 1 of this year. 4 years ago

how much backing and batting I’ll need. It’s between 5-8 yards each, depending on how wide the material ends up being.

I hope to go out and buy the remaining materials on Saturday morning – but I’ve said that before. 4 years ago

I have so many t-shirts! I get a free t-shirt at least once a week and all my camp shirts. I’m out growing the need to wear t-shirts on a daily basis as well. It’s sad, but I guess that’s part of growing up. I want to work on my quilt with all of the camp shirts, volunteer shirts, AmeriCorps freebies, and other scraps I come across this summer. It should be fun. Drop me a line if you’ve done this or have any ideas. 4 years ago

My reward for finishing this goal shall be that I get to order myself a 43Things t-shirt. I think this is somehow fitting, since the quilt is made out of t-shirts. 4 years ago

I had most of the quilt top done weeks ago, I just needed to cut the borders and sew them on. So, I did it tonight. It’s been awhile since I worked on this, so it took me 20 minutes to sew on the first side of the border – and then it took me 40 minutes to rip it out when I realized I put it on the wrong way…ugh. But I didn’t let it discourage me, and I finished off the borders. Now I need to buy some batting and backing material. Maybe tomorrow morning?

The picture above shows the quilt top before I put on the borders. I’m proud of my craftsmanship! 4 years ago

I’m putting this goal on hold for now. I hope to make a t-shirt quilt in the future. 4 years ago

I wish that I saved my concert t-shirts! I had several, but got rid of all of them. I’m going to try to think of another theme.

It might be neat to make a quilt with t-shirts that have funny sayings on them. 5 years ago