Granted, this may be the world's ugliest quilt. Somewhere along the line I let a little sister choose the slashing fabric, and it is pretty much hideous, yet surprisingly enough it goes just fine with the group of t-shirts we started with.
Here is what you need:
12 inch square of poster board
rotary cutter
ruler
warm & natural batting
rotary cutting mat
straight edge rulers
15 inch wide iron on stabilizer
6 yards flannel
5 yards cotton
Big 'ol mess of t-shirts. You need 20 shirt fronts/backs.
Now this is where you need to take extra precaution... this quilt suffered from SBS a not so rare condition also known as stinky boy smell. You will be wise to wash your t-shirts before beginning this project.
This is my doodle which became the road map for the quilt. This is where I figured out how big I wanted the t-shirt squares to be, how much I needed for slashing and all that fun suff.
I started by cutting the front from the back of each t-shirt. Simply cut the sides and shoulder seams. Simple enough.
Now using either a 12 inch square plastic quilting ruler, or a 12 x 12 square cut of poster board, trace on each t-shirt. If you look closely, you can see I used a blue crayon to get my square on this shirt. Mark all 20 of your shirts.
Do NOT cut the t-shirt to the square yet. On the wrong side of the shirt, iron on the fusible facing. Once you have all your t-shirts with the facing attached, using your rotary cutter and rulers, cut the shirts along the markings on front. This makes a nice crisp 12 inch square of each shirt. Now place all your neat t-shirt squares in a pile and set it aside.
The next thing we are going to do is cut our backing and slashing. According to my roadmap, I needed cut out of each of the cotton and the flannel backing:
4 19 x 3 inch strips
40 12 x 3 inch strips
52 17 x 3 inch strips
4 19 x 3 inch strips
14 12 x 3 inch strips
4 18 x 2 inch strips
12 11 x 2 inch strips
stack the strips as follows: flannel*batting*cotton. Right sides visible on top and bottom. You will only have 16 strips. Using your sewing machine, sew an X from corner to corner on each strip. Or if you are OCD like me, use your embroidery machine to embroider something in a running stitch to hold your pieces together. You will notice you have a ton of strips leftover still... hold on we are getting ready to use those.
With right sides together, sew the top and bottom slashing to each t-shirt. All seams on this quilt are 1/2 inch. Using your rotary cutter and ruler, square off the slashing strips to the t-shirt. Press seams.
Open out the strips, finger press. Once again with right sides together, sew side strips of slashing to each t-shirt square.
Using the rotary cutter and ruler, square off each corner of your square.
see how clean and neat your squares are now?
Do this for all 20 t-shirt squares.
Now using your poster board, cut a 15 x 15 inch square. Use this as a template to cut out the warm and natural batting.
20 15 x 15 squares
Using one of the t-shirt with slashing squares as a template, use your rotary cutter and ruler to cut 20 16 x 16 inch squares of the flannel backing
Like we did with the strips, layer your squares flannel * batting * t-shirt with slashing
Now using a sewing machine, sew an X from corner to corner to hold all 3 pieces together. Or use your embroidery machine to do something fancy to hold them together. I decided to make stitch files using all the names we have called this boy over the years. Over the top? yes, but sometimes I'm like that.
You should now have 20 t-shirt squares with the batting inside and flannel on the underside.
Now lay everything on the floor and decide how you want it to look. What shirts look best next to each other. This is all subjective, there are no t-shirt rag quilt police who are going to knock on your door if you do this wrong. There is no wrong!
Once you have decided the order of the squares, let's concentrate for a minute on the 4 corner squares. Using the top left square, sew on the left side slashing strip wrong sides together Remember this is a rag quilt. Square off the ends and sew the top slashing to the square. This is one of the long strips. Once again wrong sides together. Repeat the same for the right corner square, only the slashing is going on the right side. Now do the same for the two bottom corner squares, remembering one is left bottom and one is right bottom, so the long strips will go on the bottom left and bottom right of the squares.
Now back to row 1. Sew on the top slashing to each of the middle squares wrong sides together/ Sew the corner squares to the inside squares for a full row.
Row 2. Sew slashing on left of square #1. Sew slashing on right of square #4. Sew all 4 squares in a row wrong sides together
Row 3. Repeat just like row 2
Row 4 Repeat just like row 2
Row 5. Add the bottom slashing to the 2 middle squares. wrong sides together. Attach the 2 corner squares on either side of the middle squares.
wrong sides together, sew row 1 to row 2. Sew row 3 to the bottom of 2. Sew 4 to the bottom of 3. Sew 5 to the bottom of 4.
Sew 1/2 inch seam around the entire quilt. This is important in the fringing of the ends.
Now for the fun/messy part. Using a pair of rag snips or a comfortable pair of scissors, snip the seams at 1/4 inch intervals. This is in the seam allowance that is on top of the quilt. Don't forget the outer edges of the quilt. Keep snipping. Oh it's a good idea to put on an apron, you are going to have a thready mess on your lap when you are done.
Now shake the whole thing real hard. Stop what you are doing and go get the vacuum. Yeah, you will need it. Run the quilt through a short wash in cold water in your washing machine. Toss it in the dryer for 15 minutes only. Go ahead and run the vacuum and wipe out the washer when you are waiting for the 15 minutes. Once the time is over, clean out the lint screen. It will be very very very full. Now dry it again. And again. and again. Each dry 15 minutes long. After 4 turns in the dryer, toss it in the washer and do another wash. And start the dryer for another 4 rounds. By this point the lint should not be as much, just like a normal wash. Shake it out and it's done!!
Remember this is a very forgiving project... mistakes are easy to correct. And there are no quilt police, so you can't do it wrong. Or you can collect 20 t-shirts and send them to me and I will do it for $25/hour.
xxxx Melanie
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