Shards

"Shards" is a quilt made from the scraps left over from Prismatic.  If a prism was broken, the resulting pieces would be called "shards".  Thus the name of this quilt was born.  Shards is made of pieces of Prismatic. (I wanted this to be a Christmas gift for my daughter-in-law, but I didn't get it finished in time.  Almost!  It was close.  I will send it next Christmas. She will still love it!)

Because Shards is made from scraps, I don't have a pattern.  My vision is to have it be like a charm pack quilt (using 5" squares of scraps, and white.) Alternate the white and colors, on point, with smaller 9-patch blocks around the perimeter of the quilt.  The mock up below shows what I have in mind, although I'm not a fan of square quilts.  I'll add some rows in there to make it longer.

 

And so I start cutting scraps, and white fabric, making 5" 9-patches, and "Build the Quilt" begins!  

I will also need an outer border, so I audition fabrics but choose leftover pieces of Prismatic's backing fabric.  I have nice long sections that were trimmed off Prismatic when I pinned it. Perfect!

Block by block, diagonal row by diagonal row, the quilt grows longer and longer. This is going to be beautiful  but it doesn't use up all the scraps!  I might have to make another one of these!!  LOL

The quilt is pinned and ready for the long-arm.

Finally, the quilt top is finished.  I really love these colors! This is one of my favorite quilts.  I know, I know!  I say that for each and every one of my quilts!  

Little Boy Blue

Originally, this quilt was meant to be for Callie's baby shower.  I knew Callie's baby will be a boy, so I chose blues and grays for the color scheme.  I had a piece of gray minky for the back, which is why I chose gray for the secondary color.  This quilt will use up some scraps.  (My scrap bin overfloweth!)  I had a cool pattern that I had been wanting to try, and this seemed the perfect opportunity. However, after making my 12 blocks for the 3x4 layout, I had seconds thoughts.  This didn't look like a "baby" quilt to me!  Baby quilts (in my mind) should be either pastel colors, or bright primary colors.  I decide not to use these blocks for Callie's quilt.  So these blocks got put on the back shelf for awhile.  It still will make a nice little boy quilt, so I named it "Little Boy Blue", and put it back on the design wall. I will donate this quilt to Project Linus when it is finished.

Now that Little Boy Blue was no longer a baby blanket, I wanted to make it bigger.  I experimented with various layouts of the blocks, and decided on this one:

The "Keys" lay around a center square and the blocks will be sewn using partial seams.  I will use the same fabric for the center squares and the borders.  This was a quick project, especially since the block elements were already constructed.

Here is the finished quilt top, ready to sandwich, pin, and quilt:

The quilting was really fun to do on this quilt.  I chose a Greek Key to quilt on the checkered centered squares and on the borders.  The little checkers are a quarter inch apart, so that was perfect for spacing the Greek Keys.  It turned out really nice and I regret that I did not get a picture of the quilted borders with the Greek Keys going around them.  But I have the picture of the center squares!  Here it is:

You can see that I used a piece of gray minky for this quilt.  That was the original plan when this was supposed to be a baby quilt, but I used it to back Callie's baby quilt, the 4 Bears quilt. I was very surprised and pleased that the leftover piece of Minky was big enough to fit this quilt too.  So I got two small quilt out of that piece of minky!  Good planning!  LOL.

Here is the finished quilt, which was donated to Project Linus at the Madison Quilt Expo in September.

Max's Graduation Quilt

 My grandson, Max, also graduated this year.  He was valedictorian of his class.  He was active in both sports and theater, so he had a good selection of t-shirts to use for making him a t-shirt quilt for a graduation gift.  I asked for 16-20  t-shirts to use for this project.

The first thing I did was to make a mockup of his quilt in EQ8.  I like to do this when I don't have a pattern to work with.  It helps me to visualize the finished project,  and gives me a good estimate of how much of which fabrics to use.  I will use Darlington school colors (red and black) and also gray and some white.  I decided to make Max a "shadow quilt."  Here is how I visualized the quilt:

I made quilt blocks from Max's t-shirts. Max was not able to come up with 20 t-shirts, so he will have a 4 x 4 layout using 16 blocks.  (I am still waiting on the last 2 t-shirts at this point.)

I imported their pictures into the mock up. 

 

As a side note, I was working on Max's and Mya's graduation quilts and a baby quilt for my niece simultaneously.  I was worried that this was an abitious thing to do, trying to get 2 graduation quilts AND a baby quilt down in just a few months, It actually worked out easier than I thought, because there was no "down time" while waiting for fabric or t-shirts.  I just shifted my time from one quilt to the other and was able to finish all 3 quilts before the graduation dates/baby shower!

After adding frames and shadows to the blocks, I sewed them into rows, leaving the last row undone while I waited for 2 more t-shirts.  

One of the biggest challenges for me in the making of the quilt comes after the quilt is all assembled, and I begin to think about "how am I going to quilt this?)  I tend to make a copy of the mockup, or a picture of the quilt to draw on in a paint program.  I draw out my quilting ideas on the mockup.  I can see how it might look on the quilt without drawing chalk lines all over the fabrics.

Like this: 

  

 

I have decided to do cross hatching in the shadowy areas, and simple parallel lines in the sashing and border. I had originally thought I'd do the border lines perpendicular to the blocks, but decided to mimic the lines in the sashing instead.  I will leave the red frames around the blocks unquilted.

I found a great fabric for the backing.  I wanted something with the school colors, and geometric.  Here it is!

The final two t-shirts finally arrive, and are added to the rest of the bottom row.  I add the borders, and now the quilt is ready to sandwich, pin, and go under the longarm.

I had thought that the 4 x 4 layout would result in a smaller quilt but no!  This quilt turned out to be quite large, 86" square.  That's good because Max is a handsome, hunky guy!

The quilt gets pinned and goes under the longarm.

Here is the finished quilt:

 Mya's Graduation Quilt

I usually begin most quilts with a pattern, but I did not have a pattern for the t-shirt quilt I was planning to make for Mya's graduation quilt. I needed to make my own pattern.  I had 18 t-shirts with 2 more to come, so I knew I would be making a 4x5 layout.  I knew the school colors--purple and gold. I had some ideas for borders and sashing.  I have quilting software, a program called Elelctric Quilt 8, EQ8 for short.  I used EQ8 to make a mock up of the quilt. This helped me get an estimate of how much of each fabric I need to have or buy.  This is how I envisioned the quilt layout:

With this mock up in mind, I searched for gold and purple striped fabric online.  I thought buying striped fabric with at least 1 inch stripes would be way easier than making piano keys. This turned out to be harder to find than I thought. I ended up special ordering the striped fabric.  

While I waited for the fabric to arrive, I prepared the t-shirt squares, made the 4-patch corner stones, and sewed the framing strips to the t-shirts.  Depending on whether the t-shirts were light or dark, I tried to get a mix of 10 of each color.  I needed 10 tees framed in yellow, 10 in purple.  Some needed to be compared before I could decide how to frame it..

 

I expanded my mock up to include the tee shirt pictures. I can get a better picture of color balance this way. I moved blocks around a little and this is where it stood so far. It may change as I work on it, especially since I don't know the colors in the last 2 tee-shirts.

My striped fabric finally arrived, and I was excited to see how it looks.   I auditioned it with the quilt. (There will be an inner light gray frame separating the border from the rest of the quilt.)  The color match was not good, and this really was disappointing.  The purple in the sashing was more of a blueish purple, The purple in the stripes had more red in it.  Not only that, but the stripes were not the same size as the sashing strips.  One inch stripes for the border fabric, 1.5" for the sashing/framing strips.  I REALLY didn't like how this looks.  I auditioned some purple as a possible border choice, and instantly my mind loved it.  Not so busy or complicated.  It really fit the quilt so much better.  Purple it is!

  

The purple mock up had yellow cornerstones in the 4 corners, but I decided to nix that idea and go with solid purple all around.  The last 2 tee shirts arrived and I was finally able to put it all together.  It turned out great!  I am really loving this quilt now.  

Finally, it's ready to be pinned and quilted. 

  

It's a very large quilt,  somewhere around 78" x 90"!  Pinning the quilt turned out to be quite a chore!  For the quilting, I used invisible thread to quilt the t-shirts and sashing (I'm a big fan of invisible thread, ) and a purple thread for the borders.  I wanted to keep the t-shirt quilting simple, and repeat that design in the borders somehow.  Mya is both athletic and feminine.  I wanted the quilting to reflect both those qualities.  The arcs in the t-shirt area resemble a volleyball or basketball. When made smaller and placed side by side in the border, these arcs create a flowery pattern. Mission accomplished!

  

 

The finished quilt!  As you can see, I used the
striped fabric after all, for the binding. Perfect!

(The picture above has an odd coloration to it.  The quilt borders look very blue!  They are really a rich beautiful royal purple!)

Here is Mya with her quilt:

Callie's Baby Quilt

 My niece, Callie, will be having a baby this spring, and I have decided to make her a baby quilt.  I have plenty of time to whip up a small baby quilt for the baby shower in April.  

I have seen a baby quilt of the 3 bears in a bed, everyone snuggled in, sleeping. (Hibernating?)  I am going to make a variation of that.  I start with sewing 9-patches  into a "quilt" for the bears.

Next I make freezer paper bears for my applique patterns:

Add the bears's quilt back in to see how it will look.  Size and spacing looks good.

I start making the bears.  The parent bears will be sleeping, but the cubs are mischievious and will be awake!

I remove the bear applique pieces and finish sewing the bed:

The quilt is done except for putting the bears on.  It's a quilt of a quilt!! 

The bears go on, some details are added and it's ready to sandwich, pin, and go under the longarm.

Here is the finished quilt!

 Preparing a T-shirt for a T-shirt Quilt

 I have two grandchildren who are going to graduate from High School this spring.  Both have been very active in school sports and activities, and so I am going to make each of them a t-shirt quilt using their collection of t-shirts from their events.  I collaborated with the parents, who gathered up 16-20 t-shirts for me.  (The graduates were informed of this, just in case there was a favorite t-shirt that they wanted to keep for wearing.) 

There are many ways to prepare a t-shirt for use in a quilt.   You can view this topic in YouTube. I'll tell you about how I did it.  It's maybe not the easiest, but it works for me.  Use clean t-shirts, preferable with no fabrics softener or dryer sheets.

First,  cut off the sleeves, the shoulder seams, and  sides of the quilt, keeping the "design area" as large as possible.  I  am making 12" blocks (12.5" unfinished), so I kept a lot of space around the  design area. You may be able to use the front AND the back of the t-shirt, depending on how it's printed, so you might be able to get 2 blocks from one t-shirt.

Lay your t-shirt  section out flat on your cutting board, and smooth out the wrinkles.  Center a quilting square ruler over the design, centering it as best you can vertically and horizontally.

Center a clear ruler over the design.

Trim around the t-shirt,  about an inch or so from the ruler, cutting off the neckline, the sleeve, any excess fabric.  I call this the "rough trim," and it doesn't have to be measured. This is the area you will apply fusible web to and you want it a little larger so when you trim it to size, the entire area will be fusible.  We need to add fusible to the back of the t-shirt block because it keeps the block from stretching out of shape.  T-shirts stretch in all directions--good for comfort, bad for quilt blocks!

Rough trim

Next, put a few pins around the outside of the ruler to define the area. You will want to see where  the design is when the t-shirt is upside down on your ironing board.

When you remove the quilt ruler, your design will be outlined with those pins.

Take you t-shirt to the ironing board.  Lay it face down.  Put a piece of fusible web, glue side down, on the back of the t-shirt, making sure all areas within the pins is covered.

You may remove the all pins now, or remove them as you go.  Do not iron the pins!  Also, you should PRESS, not iron. (press = up and down with the iron, not side to side or sliding the iron across the fabric.)  Follow the instructions for the kind of fusible you are using.  

Press the fusible to the back of the t-shirt.  Don't over iron.  Some t-shirts have heavy waxy printing, or rubbery foam printing.  This can melt. 

Press the fusible to the back of the t-shirt.

Once the fusible has been applied, check to make sure the edges are all tight and that there are no "bubbles" in the fusible. 

Take your block back to your cutting mat. Center your quilt ruler on the fused t-shirt and trim to final size you need.

Voila! A finished fused t-shirt block for your quilt!

A side note-- you can use a couple of smaller pieces of fusible to use up larger scraps.  Overlap them slightly.  This works well for darker t-shirts, but may be visible on white t-shirts.