Friday, October 5, 2012

The Mary Kate Experience

It's finally done!!  The giant t-shirt quilt for my husband's cousin, Mary Kate, is finished and I love it!  Our aunt gave me a huge bag of t-shirts and free reign over the design and colors which was both fun and nerve wracking.

I used twenty-five shirts for the front.  All were cut and backed with lightweight fusible interfacing and then I jazzed them up.  The t-shirt blocks were bordered with bright colors and then all sashed together with 2.5" strips of a grey and white print.  This gave a finished size of approximately 90" square - giant!  



I still had more shirts so I pieced three into the back.  The backing fabric is a bright cheery Amy Butler print which I love!  I'll be buying some more of this one to back a quilt of my own.


I free motion quilted the whole quilt in big loops and little Bernie the Bernette kept up like a champ!  One thing that helped with the quilting, at least I think, was using a denim needle.  It had no problem gliding through the seams and layers of interfacing. 




I also wanted to do something fun with the shirts that had small emblems on the front/back but were going to be too plain to be a whole block on the quilt top.  Those were cut up and pieced into some coordinating pillows!!

 
All wrapped up and ready to be delivered tonight!



And now it's time for a break from t-shirts and back to my bee blocks and my hustle list!  Linking up at Finished it up Friday at Crazy Mom quilts, Manic Monday at SewHappyGeek and Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story.

18 comments:

  1. Amazing! Really Really GREAT! I can't believe you quilted that monster on your domestic machine! Using the denim needle is a great idea. Love those pillows too!
    !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (some spare exclamation marks in case you need any) ;)

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  2. I really like how your bordered each block with bright colors, and I love the coordinating pillows. What a fun gift!

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  3. Perfect!! And I love the idea of making pillows to go with it -- genius!

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  4. This is such a great gift, Mary Kate is one lucky girl. You've inspired me to do something similar with MY tshirts I still have from high school and college... how on earth did you do the FMQ on your machine??

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  5. Kelsey, those are amazing! The quilt AND the pillows. Mary Kate is going to love them for sure. So cool! :)

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  6. Super awesome Kelsey! She is going to love it so much!

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  7. I have one in the works and your quilt inspires me to add borders and sashing .... Really adds so much! Love it!

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  8. I love the border of each t-shirt with the sashing. Looks great! I need to get working on my t-shirt quilt now too.

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  9. Wow, there is a lucky recipient of this t-shirt quilt! Looks beautiful - and it's done: congrats!

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  10. This is awesome! The quilt turned out beautifully, and the pillows are just the thing to coordinate & showcase the small bits. Great finish!

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  11. Looks great! I heard that working with t-shirts is quite difficult.

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  12. This quilt is fabulous, and the pillows too. What a great idea for a memory quilt.

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  13. It's beautiful and your quilting is fantastic as always!!! I'm sure Mary Kate will cherish both the gorgeous quilt and super cute pillows. Well done, Kelsey!

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  14. Such a successful project, she's going to treasure the whole package.

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  15. Great job!! I have always wanted to try one, and here you go making one 90 inches!! The pillows are great, too...I am sure she will just love it!!

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  16. wow Kelsey, I LOVE your t-shirt quilt and aren't you a sweetie for doing it for your husband's cousin!!

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Thank you for commenting!