Friday, July 24, 2020

Star Wars Theme T-Shirt Quilt



Today I just finished a Memorial T-Shirt Quilt.  The quilt will be gifted to the father of the deceased young man.  Theme: Star Wars.  The prominent colors of the shirts were red and black, so I used that color scheme for the borders.  

  It went from a pile like this to this! 


  To This! 
This is a big quilt!  Measures 87 by 107!!

First I cut out each shirt larger than the block size.  I used Pellon Feather Weight Fusible Interfacing 911FF to the back of each shirt. I cut the pellon larger that the shirt size too.  This way all of the t-shirt is stabilized.  If you skip this step you will have lots of puckers if you do an overall quilt pattern on top or freehand work. 



I put the interfacing on in sections.
Iron On The Interfacing.



 I love my stream press for this.
 


I photograph each piece and "lay" them out in my EQ8 program.  Great program because not only can you preview your quilt, but you can change the size, color & layout  of your quilt.  When you are done you can print out the quilt and templates if you like.  Sure beats moving 30 pieces around the bed! 
  


A pair of shorts was in the bag shirts, so deconstructed it and made this block.

  




I longarm quilt all my quilts.  I use the black bars on the end to help keep the quilt from shifting.  Harbor Fright Magnetic Tool Holder. I use 5 across the quilt top.  


 
To make sure there wasn't any puckers on the sweater, I used water soluble topping I basted to the quilt top. Quilting over a sweater can be very challenging without topping. 



                        Close Ups
 









The overall star swirl pattern is easy to see on this block. This is also a combined block.


Combined block.


Combined block.



Space Ships: The top border design is different than the center overall star design.  
               
 Back of the quilt
 
                         Personalized Quilt Label.