twilight

In the spring, a friend approached me about quilting a quilt. She asked the cost and I gave her a ballpark figure. A few months went by and she asked again about the quilt. That's when I discovered she wanted me to MAKE a quilt, not just quilt it. That was a whole new ballgame.

I decided I could still do the quilt for what I had originally quoted her. When I've made quilts for friends in the past, I usually don't charge much more than the cost of materials etc and in this case, I thought I would make out okay since she had asked to have the quilt made in Twilight colors; red, white and black.

She wanted a picture of Edward in the center of the quilt. I thought the easiest way to do that was to get a t-shirt with his picture on it. She bought that and than I soon realized that the color scheme we had decided on would simply not work with the t-shirt. So the fabric hunt was on.

Sadly, this was when my friend told me she couldn't pay what we had agreed on; I was less than happy and as a result, the quilt sat unmade on my table for weeks.

This past weekend, I decided enough was enough and put the quilt together. Because of the limited budget, I was stuck on how creative I could get with the quilt. I decided to do a log cabin style around the t-shirt in the middle. For each border, the sizes would be different(top/bottom borders one size, sides another).

I interfaced the back of the t-shirt and started cutting.



I started with a 2inch black border around the t-shirt; I love how it frames it!



Of course Gizmo soon came to help.



No Gizmo, it is not for you!



I quilted it up yesterday and of course I used the Twilight panto!


I'm not 100% with how it turned out. I really lost money on this which makes me sad; I do feel like my friend took advantage of me(and yes, she knows I feel this way). I do feel that I did the best that I could with the limited budget that I was given.

More importantly, she loves it.

quilt monday

And it's finished.



I ditched each block than meandered/stippled in them. The two white filler blocks are my favorites. Had some fun with a ruler.



Even went crazy in one block and quilted in two hearts. First one was a tad on the flat side(I left it in anyway) but this one is almost perfect. One block I quilted wavy lines. It's not perfect but I love the look



The tshirts are all brand new so they are a crisp black, not the grey/black you see in the picture.

I quilted some straight lines into the borders/sashings. Now to get the binding finished and drag it off to the movies on Thursday!

tidbits

I finally started on my T-shirt quilt on the weekend. And just like everyone kept telling me, it was way easier than I thought once I got started.

I interfaced the wrong side of all the T-shirt fronts. I made the interfacing as big as I could before I started cutting. Than I cut them apart. That was stressful lol.

What amazed me was the T-shirt sizes. Some of the shirts were labeled Xlarge and yet they were smaller than the small T-shirts. Insane! I should mention, I didn't pick the t-shirts by size when I purchased them, I picked them because of the fronts. 1 I lucked out on when I discovered that the back had a logo too.



Two of the shirts were small enough that I ended up having to leave a little bit of the sleeve seam in the square. I don't think it's going to be noticeable. It was either that or lose some of the T-shirt front.

After cutting the shirts, I laid them out on the floor how I wanted them to go. Was happy to see that I could make each block the same width. But I made two rows 14inchs and one row 16 just to shake things up a little.



I started with the middle row, the 16inch wide one, and started fiddling with them to figure out how long the blocks should be. Once I settled on the size, I cut the blocks than sewed on some sashing strips.



I did notice there is a lot of waste. I guess it really isn't waste when I cut the T-shirts so big originally. This is the pile after trimming all the blocks down to the correct size. I did end up running out of black interfacing so a few of them ended up with white. Hope that doesn't show through when I quilt it.

Here's the blocks at the start. And the only picture I'm going to show until it's finished.



I did end up getting the rows sewn together as well. I just need to even up the sides than I can get the top sewn together. It's going together so well that I don't see a problem having it quilted next week. yay!