Whoever said Sewing was Relaxing Never Made a T-Shirt Quilt

You are well aware of my sentimental personality and pack rat tendencies. If you’ve known me since at least middle school you are also aware that 80% of my daily wardrobe is a t-shirt and jeans. So it really shouldn’t surprise you that over the past 10 or 12 years I have collected a large amount of meaningful t-shirts. Ones that are from cool places, teams, or those than I wore so often they are half as thick as a normal shirt. Well, I decided to make them into a t-shirt quilt. Which according to multiple websites is “fun and easy!” Maybe if you have a pre-made pattern and only use 15 shirts, not if you have to make the pattern yourself from 50 something shirts. 

Putting together the pattern was a two day project that was
similar to putting together a puzzle without knowing what the end result
would look like.

The most difficult part was actually cutting up my t-shirts. This part of the process was slightly traumatizing. I only took comfort in the fact that I was still going to have a piece of my shirts, and that now I “can wear them all at once.” Before I could really think about what was happening, I quickly threw out the scraps. Well, I did save some of my favorites. Hey, I might make a pillow case later or maybe even a t-shirt out of t-shirt scraps.

Next came sewing everything together. For anyone watching my mom and me, this was the most entertaining part. It took us four or five different attempts to realize that my sewing machine made the fabric bunch up, and my mom’s machine didn’t. Then it took me four or five failed attempts to figure out that I had to pin pieces together or they would be all jacked up. And jacked is not something you want to be when quilting.

Now I’m sending away all the t-shirts sewn together and the back to someone with a giant machine that will quilt them together with far less frustration than I would experience if I attempted to put it together myself. The back is navy (my favorite color, especially for a shirt) minky, which is basically the softest fabric on earth. Seriously, go to the nearest store that sells fabric and rub your face on some minky. It’s like putting your face on a cloud. Actually, I don’t know what that feels like, clouds are just the first thing I thought of that would be soft. But that made me think of soft metals, which is something in the category of lead. Please don’t rub your face in lead, because you will die and I’ll be sad. Except I will have something soft to dry my tears, but that won’t make up for your absence. Wow, can you tell I wrote this at 1 in the morning?

I will post a picture of the completed project soon. Try not to fall off the edge of your seat, because I know that’s where you are right now.