Tee-Shirt Quilt

I have not been as productive as i had hoped this afternoon. I thought i would post some pictures of things i have been working on.

I had mentioned the portrait quilt in my last entry and wanted so show some progress that has been made! I am not sure if my method of doing this is the most efficient, but so far it seems to be working- After projecting and tracing the image onto some paper i figured out how i was going to cut the stencil with an exacto knife to make it so the different color fabrics could be layered over one another. This produced some pretty confusing stencils.....

after i cut the stencils out and traced them onto the fabric with a fabric pen, i carefully cut out the pieces with my exacto knife... getting something like this once i layered them on top of one another...

I have not attempted to sew them together yet, but i am excited to see what they will look like! I will use the zig zag stitch on my sewing machine and do it really tight making it almost a solid line of thread. I recently bought some basting spray, so instead of pinning the different pieces in place, ill just be able to spray them, which will make it so much easier!

Ill keep you updated, this is just something i am working on in my spare time and hopefully ill be able to submit it to the Quiltcon quilt contest in february located in Austin Texas!

http://www.quiltcon.com/

I am also working on another quilt as im working on this portrait quilt. I am making a tee-shirt quilt for my friend jessica. It is my first tee-shirt quilt and so far it is going pretty smooth! I cut out all the fronts of the shirts (saving as much material as i could so later i could cut them to size) and then ironed on some interface to make the shirts so the jersey material didn't stretch.

I cut them into 15 inch squares and laid them out in a pattern I liked- alternating color and white to make a checker board pattern-

I then cut strips of navy blue fabric that i will use for the sashing. This will frame each tee-shirt square with color and make the quilt look more uniform. I cut the navy material 3 inches wide and 15 inches long (the same size as the squares).

I then sewed one strip to the bottom of each square (all except the bottom row where a boarder will be sewn)

Next i sewed the columns together. So i have 5 columns of tee-shirts and laid them on the ground so the next step will be easier...

I think tomorrow I can sew 3 inches of the navy material between them (running down the length of the quilt) making a boarder of navy around each block. and Ill sew a boarder of 5 inches of the navy all the way around... i hope i can finish the top of the quilt tomorrow!!!

and my daily thanks...

thank you garage sales where popular fashions from the 70s that have died (but now once again are in vogue) can be bought for 25 cents. swoon....