Hollywood's T-Shirt Quilt

I found a t-shirt quilt pattern in a magazine a few years ago, and decided to cut it out and save it in my "personal potential patterns" binder. You never know when something like that will come in handy, and I've used my binder several times already.

So when it came time to think about making a quilt for our friend Hollywood, I learned that he had a large stash of t-shirts from over the years that he didn't wear anymore. It seemed the perfect time to use the instructions I'd saved.

I asked him to bring over about 25 t-shirts, from that I selected about 2/3 of what we needed (and what would fit in the pattern), and I began cutting and fusing the t-shirts into squares. Meanwhile, I was surfing around the web looking at t-shirt quilts that other people have made. I found the neatest one that used SEC teams t-shirts that used a setting I hadn't seen before elsewhere, and I really liked it. It uses light borders on each block and then a second border on two sides of the block to make it appear as if it has a shadow.

Here is a block with the first border applied.

T-shirt block, bordered

And here is a block with the second border applied for the shadow effect.

T-shirt block, shadowed

Quilt top piecing finished July 2008

T-shirt quilt pieced, July 2008

Quilting on one of the blocks
Modified rectangular meandering machine quilting

Quilting on the back
Quilting on the back

Another block quilted - loops this time
Quilting with loops

January 3, 2009: I made some coasters from the quilt backing fabric to go along with his quilt when I eventually finish it and give it to him. The pattern for these is from the book Last-Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson.

Quilted Coasters

Finished quilting January 2009
Quilted January 2009

Backing
backing of quilt