Sew What--Vicki's Quilting Blog

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!