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. 

A Tutorial for Framed Circles

 This post is especially for my daughter who needs to learn how to do this!   How do you sew that circle into that square with a hole in it?!  This might look complicated, but it's not if you just take it step by step. 

When you do circles (or curves), there should be templates with your pattern.  On those templates, there are usually marks that you need to transfer to your fabrics.  It's important to do this, so you can get the spacing for aligning and attaching your pieces. 

If there are no marks, you would simply make a a mark on your fabrics at the half, quarter, and maybe eighth (if it's a big piece) of the way around your curve. You would fold your piece in half, make a pencil mark to mark the point, then fold in half again for the quarter point, make your pencil mark, etc.  You would do this with both the circle, and the frame pieces.  Then you will be matching up those marks for pinning, and then sew.

My templates had marks already on them, and I did ransfer those marks onto the fabrics.  I used a Frixion pen (your marks iron right off!) for the lighter fabrics, and a gray chalk pencil for the darker fabrics.

 

To sew the circle into the hole, remember, RIGHTS SIDES TOETHER!  It seems too basic to state, but logic says,  put the circle on top of the hole, and somehow sew it there!  It seems counter-intuitive  to do it properly, but it needs to be that way, right sides together. 

Start by spreading out the frame.  Match a mark from the frame to a mark on the circle. (If orientation is important to your finished circle, make sure you match your marks accordingly.)  I want a certain color spike in the corner, so I will start there.  Match the marks, align the raw edges, pin.

Move to the next mark, and do the same.  Match, align, pin. Do not worry about aligning all the fabric all the way around just yet (see that yellow fabric sticking out in the picture below?)  You will align that little bit as you sew.  For now, just make sure your pins have the two raw edges aligned. You can add more pins later if you feel the need.

Continue going around the circle, matching your marks, aligning raw edges, and pinning the points.

I thought this needed more pins, so I added an extra pin between the marks to help hold it:  

 

front of circle                                  back of circle

 

Because I have really skinny points on these spikes, I am going to sew on the back of the circle so I can see where the tops of the points are.  Also, all of the paper pieced spikes have the seams going in the same way, and I want to cross those thick seams in the same direction.  You will want to sew slowly and as smoothly as possible, trying to follow the curve of the circle at the quarter-inch mark.  You can't see if puckers are forming on the backside, but you can feel your fabric as you sew, and often can feel if he fabric gets thicker.  Also, you can watch for "folds".  You can lift the fabric with the needle down to see if it is clear sailing ahead, or if you might have to smooth it out under there.  I did this often, every couple of inches.  If you see a fold, or a potential fold, stop sewing, and try to smooth it out before you sew over it. This is a slow process, but take way less time then having to pick out a pucker. When you finish sewing all around, check both sides for puckers.

As careful as I was, I still had one tiny pucker.  I picked out a few stitches and resewed.  

  

Press your seam carefully.  Press, don't iron.  Press means iron goes up and down, not sliding sideways. Ironing can stretch fabrics slightly, distorting it somewhat and this is especially true if there are bias edges.  Circles have 100% bias edges, so you don't want to stretch it out of round.  This would be easy to do with all those bias edges!  Also, do not use steam or spray starch.  Either could cause some shrinkage, which results in wrinkles or little "waves" in the fabric.

Here is the finished result:  

I hope this was helpful !

  

Round Two

 The second spikey circle of Beauty proved to be quite a bit easier then the first!  The paper piecing took a little longer as it was a bigger circle, but like I said earlier, the bigger the circles, the easier they are to sew.  So attaching it to the inner circle went well, even though I did have to pick out a couple small puckers..  Here is the second round of spikes:

The next step is to add corners to this circle to make it square.  I cut the fabric for the corners, sewed them into a square, and here is how it looks:  

Now to make that circle fit into that square's hole!
(I will go into detail on how I did that in my next post. )

Here it is!  Voila!

I'm gonna have to take my sewing machine into the Fix-It guy.  There are some mechanical problems that I need to take care of.  In the meantime, I can use my old faithful Brother machine to work on more of the paper pieces-- LOTS of spikes to make!