Monday, May 11, 2015

T-shirt Update

Lots of t-shirts news today, as major progress was made this weekend. I created my own quilt retreat, mainly because hubby was away, allowing me to spread out all the t-shirts. If you follow me on Instagram, you've seen the takeover, otherwise, this is what my living room looked like Friday night:

Four of the five quilt layouts are here. I ran out of room, so the fifth one is in my bedroom.

And just so I wouldn't have long treks to my studio to do all the cutting and sewing, I set up a cutting, pressing, and sewing station in the kitchen.

There's a lot of counter space for cutting, another counter for pressing, and my featherweight on a TV table. She and the setup are working wonderfully. BTW, I named her Stella, and she has been a joy to work with! And no, I did not imbibe on that bottle of wine - I'm more likely to hit the coffee maker out of view on the right.

Walking through that doorway, takes me to the living room, where all the layouts are covered when not being worked on. See why?

Yes, the fur babies think this is a new playground, as the sheets let them slide easily to chase a toy. And if there were no sheets, they'd be sliding through my layouts! The pillows help hold down the sheet edges, preventing the little pests from going under. The things I have to do!

So, a bit of the back story about this project. These shirts belonged to a gentleman who competed in a lot of swimming events. When my friend (his wife) gave me the t-shirts,

half of them were fused. I finished up the fusing, then trimmed to dimensions that fit the design on the shirt. All of the large pieces are random dimensions, with the little squares cut into three uniformly sized groups. I was also given black fabric for the sashing, but wanted to add some blue to liven things up. In my stash, I had a perfect blue that looks like water shimmers, and works so well with the black. Adds the punch without detracting from the t-shirt blocks.

And it's carrying on the water theme. How awesome is that??

Now for progress pictures. This is the layout for T1

which got changed a bit as I was sewing. See the block to the right of the star? It's corner is touching the lower right block - not good. Moving them a round a bit created a better flow for the sashings, so now it looks like this:

Approximately 4' x 6', the tops still need borders. Oh, and that hole in the center? A block with his name appliqued on it will go there, as it will in each quilt.

Here's T2, with the layout first