A forgotten Blog- A T-Shirt Quilt for my Dad

For a long time my Dad has been talking about wanting a T-shirt quilt made from some of his running shirts from over the years.   Also for a long time I have had a box of his shirts with a big to-do on it-  Meaning I said I would take care of it and I hadn't yet.

So in 2014 I finally decided that I needed to get it done. I spent a lot of time looking at Pinterest at different designs to see what I liked best. I also grabbed an idea sheet from JoAnn Fabrics.  In the end I decided to go with a rag quilt for a few reasons.

1. The edges are a bit more forgiving and I was worried about sewing the T-Shirt Material and needing clean crisp seems
2. I really like the look and feel of  a rag quilt.  I was hoping that it would help maintain some of the t-shirt softness.
3. OK- being really honest I have done rag quilts before and they normally are faster and easier to work with- Not sure that turned out to be true this project.

Here is the link to the directions I used for this project:

T-Shirt Quilt- Rag Quilt Style

The above link is really comprehensive so I am not going to add a lot of additional color.

Once I had all of the squares cut (I ended up making them 12.5" x 12.5" because it best accommodated the images on the shirt) and sown together with the backing, I spent some time arranging the shirts into a manner that looked good and alternated colors. Just a comment on creating the squares-  this is a bit tougher than I initially anticipated-  with the T-shirts, the the interface (needed to make she shirts into the right kind of quilting material, the batting and the back this because pretty tough and I had to buy a stronger.   

Here is what it looked like after I got them arranged to my liking.

When my dad got the quilt for Christmas he was pretty excited but in all the excitement I forgot to get a picture of the final product.  Here are some pics my dad took after he hung it on the wall.

I think that Marcus likes it too!