Week ending October 31, 2021

Not much going on in my sewing room this week to share. It was the last week of the Entropy Scrap Along with Squirts and Running Stitches. I posted my final top on IG in hops of winning a prize. 

What I spent all my time on was a t-shirt quilt for a friend's daughter. I have my own process for doing these and I'll post some tips and a little about what I do below. 

I finished the quilt top up on Sunday. Here it is folded up ready to go home with the mess the quilt making process makes. 

Tips - I always do a strip wash on the t-shirts before I start. I soak them in a solution of borax, washing soda, and foca detergent, then wash them in hot water with a double rinse. I want to make sure all body oils, and any fabric softener are removed. 

I interface each piece with a knit interfacing. It typically takes an entire 10 yard bolt to do one quilt. 

I iron on the interfacing on the hottest setting on my iron and use a Teflon sheet between the iron and the shirt or interfacing at all times. 

I measure the graphic on each shirt and determine the minimum and maximum width and height that is usable. I do a minimum of 1" space around the graphic when I can, and maximum of about 3 or 4". I put this data into excel and make a spreadsheet. I start by determining how many need to be a certain width - there's always a few that you have zero wiggle room on.  These I'll often use as a guide to make one column a specific width. I then find my widest one, and set that as a column as well. I find others that can fit into those columns all while calculating the height on each column.  I've them to be 70-80" in length and 60-80" wide. It all depends on how many shirts you have to play with. 

Sew the pieces together with a walking foot.  Even though they are stabilized, they will still shift and stretch. A walking foot will help keep things perfectly flat and even. 

Use the scraps to make small blocks bigger and to use as borders. I often add some scrappy columns to add width when needed. This particular quilt needed extra width. The blocks were all tall. I tried making another column, but them it was wider than it was tall.  So to even it out, I added 4 columns of the scraps.