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: