Bringing in the New with the Old

As you can probably tell, I'm new to blogger but not new to blogging.  I recently had to revamp my other blogs to clear up some space and regroup.  Thus this little regular-quadrilateral of the internet was born.  And through this rehash I found some pictures of past projects that are pretty dear to me: the first quilt that I made.  Now usually I would say that was years ago!  It doesn't deserve a post now and it would be too much effort to back date it or anything like that.  However just yesterday I fielded a call from a family friend asking, "Hey do you know anyone who would be willing to make a surprise t-shirt quilt for my son?"  Unfortunately, I had to say "no" because I have way to much work to be making a quilt, especially at my little flat.  But it got me thinking of the summer of 2008.

When my brother moved out of the house a few years ago, I decided to make him his own little bit of home to bring back with him.  So, over the summer I went to my Grandmother's place and I made him a t-shirt quilt in 3 weeks flat.  Luckily my mom basically refuses to through anything out especially things like t-shirts, which means I had a ready stash to chose from when I set down to make the quilt!  Now the trick with a t-shirt quilt is that you have to put interfacing on the back of each t-shirt block in order to stabilize it... otherwise it will be practically impossible to quilt and your quilter *will* murder you with a rusty needle to the jugular vein.  Don't Bleed on the Fabric!  I made them 15.5in blocks including seam allowance, which seemed to work out fine.  And for those blocks who needed a little extra to get to the full 15" we always have leftover fabric from those wild beach pants my grandmother made for us when we were kids.  Anyhow Long story short this is a picture of the quilt when its still on the design wall awaiting finalization.

Also that little banner of animal paws running up the right hand side of the quilt will actually be turned into a header.  I couldn't bear to turn this paw-print t-shirt into just another 15" square... I mean how could you they covered the shirt: front, back, sleeves, and collar.  I couldn't choose where to cut!  So I cut them all out individually and used every single one-there were a lot!  I machine appliqued them down on the borders and sashing with a little Heat'n Bond and zigzag stitched clear thread.  However, I believe this is a picture pre zig or zag but let me tell you that was a lot of work!