Shirt Quilts Progress

Yesterday I finished up the 40 blocks I need for two more shirt tops.  

They will go with these blocks I finished at the end of February:

I was going to put my design wall up to layout all these blocks and start sewing them together, but I am baby sitting this week and need easy access to the room I sew in and the living room. Since the design wall covers the french doors that connect the two, I decided to wait.

Instead I started the quilting on Shirt Quilt #1. 
 I am almost finished with the stitch in the ditch, I have 1 side of the border and a wee bit left on the other corner. Once that is done I will break out the darning foot for some free motion quilting in the string blocks.


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7th Finish + More

I finished the Mariners compass last night.  This makes finish #7 for 2012.

 I was going to put it off finishing this indefinitely because I didn't like the top fabric I picked out and I hadn't decided on a way to fix it to my liking.  You can see what it use to look like on the left.  

Tomorrow is guild meeting and they asked everyone who took this class to bring their finished project to the next guild meeting for show and tell. Nothing like a little pressure to get my butt in gear. So I made myself come up with something I liked and appliqued it on, then I put on the binding.  I am liking it a whole lot better now.

I was going to paper peice a smaller star for the center, I even had the papers printed out, but I got lazy was just ready to be done with it, so I cut out a circle instead and sewed it down.

It's looking good now, I actually like it and will put it out on display.

Before I worked on the mariners compass yesterday. I whipped up these two small quilts.  These are the ones I am going to teach the girls with at church tonight.  I have been assigned the task of teaching them how to tie a quilt.  They are small, 24 x 36 ish and I will turn them into the guild for our charity project when we are finished.

This morning I needed some batting for the two tops above, so I basted two bigger quilts knowing I would have enough left over batting from that process for these two smaller quilts.  Funny how one project motivates me to work on another project.  While I was at it I basted my i.s.t.h. quilt too.

With these three basted that makes a total of 6 quilts ready for quilting.  I better get busy... but first a little housework is in order.  Yeah, I did sweep and vacuum the floor this morning so I could baste in a clean room and I got two loads of laundry done on Monday - which isn't much with a house of 6 people - but the rest of the house has been neglected the past couple days.  Though it pains me to step away from the sewing machine when I am in such a good grove, I better get some other stuff done.

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Lots of 4 Patches

Hot off the ironing board.  70 four patches.  They measure 8.5 inches.  There are enough for two quilts.  I want to make two similar to the one Crazy Mom Quilts made last fall.  The colors will be different of course, but the pattern will be the same.  Now I need to make 40 coordinating blocks to go with the 4 patches.

I have a huge pile of leftover 4.5 inch squares to choose centers for the alternate blocks, but I don't have any background fabric.  That means fabric shopping is in my immediate futre.   YAY!! I love the fabric store!

Once these two tops are put together I will only have one top left. My hubby's aunt said I could work on them whenever, but I have made a personal goal to get them all finished by the end of April and so far so good, they are going together according to schedule.

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2 Shirt Quilt Tops Complete

Only 4 more to go.

Since these quilts are going to Aunt Darla's kids I asked her which background she preferred for these 9 patches.  She chose the black so that is what I went with.  I must say I like how it turned out.  This top was made entirely out of shirts except the thicker outer black border.  I used all the solid colored shirts for this one and will make one more top similar to this one.

This next one had been almost done for a while, I just needed to add the piano key border to it. Which I did a couple weeks ago, I just hadn't gotten around to taking a picture of it.  It is made entirely of the shirts.  Even the off white sashing was a shirt.

I am going to make two tops more with a mixture of solid shirts and stripped shirts, and if I have enough strips left over the final one will be another string quilt.

I am getting excited seeing some actual progress on these tops.  Taking apart the shirts and cutting them up into all the shapes I needed has taken awhile so it is fun to see some good progress.

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60 Nine Patches

 I finished cutting up all the shirts except the two black ones and one white one.  I am not sure what to do with those two yet.  Perhaps I can use them for shashing if there is enough.  Out of the other 9 shirts I cut a bunch of 3.5 and 4.5 squares.  I took the smaller squares and made 60 nine patch blocks.  These will make two different quilts.  But I can't decide if I want to shash them with either white or black.  So I took a photo of them with both backgrounds to get a feel for what each one would look like.  Seeing them side by side I am leaning towards the black.  But my hubby said he thinks black is too dark so I am still on the fence.

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Cutting More Shirts

I have another pile of shirts to work with today.  Last night I pulled the buttons off a few of them and cut the seams off.  I have 8 more shirts left to prep.  My daughter offered to clip the buttons off the other shirts last night but I told her she better get a good nights rest for her exams.
This afternoon I will take her up on her offer.

This morning I started cutting into the shirts I trimmed up last night.  I need 3.5 and 4.5 inch squares to make a couple more quilts for my hubby's Aunt.

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Men's Shirts String Quilt

Last night I decided to spend a little more time on my husband's Aunt's quilts.

I had been trying to make at couple blocks a week, but last night I went ahead and finished up the last 8 blocks for this top and even got some of the rows sewed together.

I have two more seams and then this part of the top will be finished.  Then it will just need borders.

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Back To My String Blocks

I had some time to work on the string blocks for the quilt I am making for my husband's Aunt.

With 12 blocks complete I am halfway finished.

With the pieces I had leftover from trimming the above blocks, I fiddled around with some crumb blocks.    Hmm, I think I may be a little obsessive with the crumbs.  These blocks measure 4.5in square and the block on the right has 36 pieces in it... 

But, if I have enough crumbs left over to make 61 more of these then I can make a quilt like Natasha made here.

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Block Progress

        Today was a busy day for me around the house, but every now and then I would steal 15 min or so and sit at the sewing machine to work on some projects.  I am simultaneously working on two projects and during my short bursts of sewing time I made 5 more string blocks and the Sawtooth Star blocks for the table topper and place mats I am making.  I am impressed at how much I got done during those several 15 minute sewing sessions.  I really felt like I didn't have much time at the machine today, but when I take a peek at the blocks on the design wall, I must admit I got more done than I realized.

Tomorrow looks to be another busy day with three of my kids out of school.  My oldest has two more days left filled with exams, but she also has early dismissal at 11:45. So between kids, chores, and school pickup, I may have to do 15 minute sewing intervals again tomorrow.

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Started the String Blocks

I sewed together all the 9 patch and border strips this morning and got a start on the string blocks for the shirt quilt I am making.  Only 20 more string blocks to go, but I need to cut up more shirts.  I had only cut the sleeves during the first cutting session, and that has gotten me pretty far, but now I need some longer strips for these string blocks, so back to the cutting table I go.   

Earlier today, when I was cutting out my 24 base squares for my string blocks, I also cut out the pieces for some place mats and a table topper.  They will be for my good friend's grandmother. These should be quick and fun to sew up.




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Finished the 9 Patches

This morning I finished up all the 9 patches for the shirt quilt I am working on.

I will have to sew them to the sashing later on tonight though, because right now I am off to a matinée to see a pirate movie with the kids and after that I plan on hitting the craft stores for their Memorial Day Weekend Sales.  Hope I find some good loot.  :)

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Sewing Progress

I got a little bored cutting shirts, so I decided to shift to sewing for a bit.

I got all the sashing strips sewn together yesterday and half of the nine patches.  

I have a pile of squares ready to go for the rest of nine patches, and once those are sewn together I will start the string blocks.

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Slow and Steady Progress

Cutting these shirts into strips is taking way longer than I thought, but I am making steady progress.  I have all the strips cut for the sashing and most of the squares for the 9 patches in between the sashing.  I took a small break from cutting and sewed a few sashing strips together and a small 9 patch.  Only 34 more 9 patches,  53 sashing strips, and 24 string blocks to go.  :)

While I was cutting and sewing, I had my daughter cut off the buttons of a few more shirts so I can cut more strips for the string blocks.  In the photo are two sets of sleeves I will cut next. Hopefully I can finish cutting the rest of the shirts up by this weekend and get sewing on the top next week.

The Start of Something New

During my craft time the past couple days I have been cutting up men's shirts.  My husband's Uncle died last summer and his Aunt has asked me to help turn his old shirts into quilts for her children.   So far I have cut off the collars, button plackets, and seams of 8 shirts.  There are many more shirts, but this will give me a good start.

I am going to make a slightly smaller version of this quilt on the right.  It seems easy enough to figure out the pattern just by looking at it.  If I knew the name of the pattern, or a link to who posted the photo, I would add it here, but unfortunately that isn't the case. When I snagged the photo years ago I didn't think to rename it to something that would tell me where I found it.  Instead I put it in my "Quilts by Other People" folder.  Now I am really wishing I knew who posted this so I could link to their site, so if anyone knows who made this quilt, please let me know so I can do just that.

*UPDATE*  

Thanks to Natasha of Scraps-A-Plenty, I now know the blog where this photo is showcased.  You can see it as the banner photo of  JulieKQuilts.  The pattern can be found in Evelyn Sloppy's book Strips and Strings. Thanks Natasha!!  

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