Tom had a lot of shirts- so many places he went with his beautiful wife – my Mother in Law, Marian. They traveled with friends on tours all over the world. Most of the shirts Marian gave me for this project looked like they were never worn. Cutting up perfectly lovely T’s is sort of a hurdle to overcome but once it is done, well… then the real work starts. I prefer to randomly sort the shirts and then balance for size, color. My planning board is not big enough to arrange a full sized quilt so I do it in sections- The tags you see are the measurements for each cut shirt block. I use a grid/mathematical calculation so everything fits when the sashing goes in and I get less panic when I get to the end of a section. Every block must finish to a increment of 1.5 inches-finished. There is a great tutorial and written instructions on Bluprint.
I had already decided I wanted a batik fabric for sashing. Most of the shirts had a tropical and island-like vibe so it seemed natural. You can obviously use as many fabrics as you want, but I like to use a single sash color. I settled on a lovely blue batik that worked well with all the shirts.
Once I started to piece in the blocks, I worked in sections. I had targeted a width of 48′-54 so it would be a nice width for a twin bed.
My sweet grandson Luke likes to hang out with me in the sewing room- and he is useful! He LOVES to vaccuum. Everything!
Typical Sewing room view… PS- the track you see is great! I would give them a 5 star review as a toddler-friendly race track.
