Week 2: T-shirt Quilt

No, this is not an ironing segment, but rather an oops! thing.  I use my iron for clothing wrinkles and for quilting.  The bottom is always bright and shining.  However, I made a mistake.  I have been using fusible interface and a pressing cloth this past week, but when I started putting the t-shirt squares with partial borders on, I simply forgot to use the pressing cloth on the back side.  The blocks have no issues, but the residue from the fusible really took a toll on the iron.  I used a special cleaner for the bottom---Not once but three times!  This iron is looking better, but it now has a label on it saying use only for interface and wood projects.    We bought a new one in our travels on Sunday.



Saturday, October 29:

Kevin spent the day working on some projects at school.  I finally settled in and got the top pieced, with the exception of the outer border.  Took about 5 hours.  Maybe I was dinking, though because it does not seem it should have taken that long for so few seams.

The top is laying on a queen size bed.  It is going on a full-size one, so the borders are going to be 7 inches wide, or about 1/2 the width of the blocks.

Plan is to cut the borders on Monday, but that is all.  Because of my lack of sewing table space in the studio, Kevin and I will haul the machine and it's table into the kitchen on Tuesday and I will attach the borders and piece the back out there.  After that, the quilt will be ready for quilted, so don't expect to much updating for the rest of the week.  Several other quilting projects are in the que ahead of it.

Tuesday, November 1:
Decided that I would take the front patches from the t-shirts and combine them to make a long pillow cover to place the actual quilt it for storage. The white shirt has an open pocket where my friend can tuck a special note to her daughter.  I really cut up the two pieced t-shirt blocks so substituted a plain blue and a plain yellow to give the correct number of blocks.  I am hoping that there will be enough border fabric left for the back, but at least I have a plan.  Used the same fusible woven interfacing on these blocks.  After I finished, I needed to clean off the iron again, but now that is a designated iron, I don't care too much that it is not all shiny and clean.  Whole process took about 3 hours, including the iron cleaning.

Friday, November 4:

Did not mean to let so many days pass before I worked on the t-shirt quilt again, but I am still ahead of schedule so it works.  Today the bindings are cut and ready to add.  Looks like I will have plenty of binding material to put a back on the pillow.  The reason I do have the extra is because I actually able to cut the t-shirt blocks larger than originally planned.  Tonight I am going to have Kevin assist me with moving around the sewing machine and it's table.  Should not take long to get the border on.  This weekend I plan to load it on the HQ and meander the whole thing.  The t-shirts are the focus of this quilt not the quilting.
Should be working on the binding by the middle of the week even with the other projects that are in the works.
The borders needed to be pieced, so then measured through the middle of the quilt for two of the edges.  The others will be fitted when I have the first 2 border edges sewn down.  The ironing, cutting, and piecing took about 40 minutes.  Not certain how long it will take to do the edges, but I will record the time tomorrow.