sister suzy's memory quilt

We've been saving t-shirts for quite awhile, from grade school through high school.  I had to wait on a few that she wasn't ready to give up.

The blocks are 12 x 12-inches.  While doing research on how to put the quilt together, there were several different opinions on seam allowances.  Most suggested half-inch while a few suggested quarter-inch.  I used half-inch, but if I make another one I will use quarter-inch and see which one I like best.  One of the suggestions was that you need one t-shirt per block.  We didn't have that many shirts.  What we did have was most of the t-shirts were printing on the front and back, as well as on the sleeves of several t-shirts.  So look your shirts over to see what you have.

You will want to use a featherweight iron-on interfacing or interfacing for single knit.  Be sure to check your interfacing for stretch and place the interfacing stretch 90 degrees to the stretch of your t-shirt before ironing.  I cut my interfacing the exact size I wanted for my block which in this case was 13 x 13" for the large blocks.  This includes the seam allowances.  Some sites said you wanted to purchase a half-yard of interfacing per block.  There are 42 blocks in this quilt.  That would have been 21 yards of interfacing!  I found some 72" wide interfacing and only picked up 6 yards.  I had more than enough.

Because of the expense of just obtaining the rights to run two shows of Beauty and the Beast from Disney and the fear of potential hassles over copyright infringements their theatre director choose not to make everyone shirts for this play.  So, we saved a hand-bill and copied it onto light fabric, transfer paper and ironed the transfer onto the back of one of her shirts.  (I could do a full-blown rant on the cost of obtaining the rights to do this play by a very small high school.  Let's just say, I think, Disney should be ashamed of themselves!)

 This is a photograph of the girls in her class and the woman class sponsor on their senior trip to Missouri.  Everyone had great fun dressing-up in period clothing and posing.  She doesn't know about this block, it was a piece of last minute inspiration.  You can see I had trouble getting the iron-on to separate from the backing.  I didn't try this with regular woven fabric; I wonder if the transfer would have separated better?

On to the piecing!  This block is strips pieced together from a shirt.  The top part of the block was from the front and the bottom part of the block is two strips from the back.  I felt I would have had too much empty space if I had made two blocks instead of one.

 On this block the upper-wing of the mockingbird was just a little bit above the neckline of the shirt, so I turned the square ruler a bit to pick up all of the decal.  Then I set the block off-center to finish filling it out to the 12-inch block I wanted.

This block is from the long sleeve of one of her shirts, denoting her contribution to the production.

I did the backing in flannel with no batting.

There were several factors involved with the decision to tie the backing and top together.  One being the top was heavy and I didn't want to add any more weight to the quilt.  If you get the quilt too heavy you will need an industrial washer to clean it.  Next, I didn't want any quilting to distract the eye from what was going on in the blocks.

So technically this blanket is not a quilt but a comfort.  The difference is whether or not you sew the layers together, so say the old ladies my mother quilted with.  Also, most comfort's binding is the backing pulled forward and covering the raw edges.  Which is how I bound this one.

Well the label is now on; time to finish up the surprise that goes with this comfort.

I hope everyone is having a good day!

Judy

UPDATE:  June 18,  I forgot to photograph how I fixed a couple of holes in the flannel where it looks like the material got caught during printing.

The best part is she loved the repair!  Judy