Badminton T-shirt Quilt

 

Finished large t-shirt quilt

     My daughter-in-law brought me a couple of bags of t-shirts from her uncle.  He played badminton and was in many tournaments.  We spent an afternoon sorting through the shirts and deciding which ones to use.  She wanted it for a queen sized bed so we went with 6' x 7'.  

Pile of t-shirts

     The first step was taking apart the t-shirts so I could then iron on the stabilizer.  I use 911-F by Pellon to give the shirts enough body and prevent them from stretching while cutting and stitching.  Some of the t-shirts needed to be cut a little differently than my usual cutting.  One had a logo very near the sleeve so I had to include some of the sleeve in the block.  One was a polo shirt so I needed to consider where the buttons were so they didn't wind up in a seam allowance.  There were a few that had just small chest logos so we opted to use four shirts in one square.  Some had patches that I removed and added to another square with just a small logo.  

Initial layout

Sleeve in the quilt square

Polo shirt

Four patch block

Patches block

     After I got all the squares cut to size I did the layout.  I wound up with four extra shirts.  When I looked at what I had extra and some of the squares I had in the layout, I realized there were several that had short designs.  I cut those down and then added part of the extra shirts.  Now I had just one extra square.  I decided to add that to the back of the quilt, almost like a label.

Two together

Two more together

     After getting the front pieced, I had to piece the fleece for the back as the quilt was rather large.  Before pinning the front to the back, I sewed the extra square to the front, right sides together, with the two loose edges pressed under.

Adding the extra square for on the back

Pinned to the backing

      I sewed all around, leaving an opening for turning.  I then turned it right side out and stitched close to the edge to closed the opening and also keep the backing from rolling forward.  I then hand stitched the two loose edges of the square on the back.  The last step was tacking in the corners of the t-shirts to keep it all together.  

Quilt 'label'

The tacking cross from the back

     I do hope Uncle Bill likes it.