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.
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