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.

 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.