Here’s the finished quilt. Customer was absolutely thrilled and exclaimed that this one “looked much better than the one they’d seen in a magazine”.
The finished size is 30″x45″. The backing is done in a smaller zebra print. The binding is hand-stitched to the back. The batting I used is Warm & Natural which has 8″ quilting lines. I simply picked a motif in the center of each graphic and machine quilted around that, along with ditch quilting around the inside of each t-shirt block. It’s strictly my personal preference. I like my t-shirt quilts to still look like t-shirts when I’m finished. Some of the “longarm quilting” out there in t-shirt quilt land looks like an afterthought with random loops and squiggles with no regard for placement or accentuating the t-shirt graphics. My extra bit of machine stitching in the middle means block will be secure will be sturdy enough and it still looks like a t-shirt quilt, plus you can barely see the stitching unless you know where to look.
I normally launder my quilts before delivering them to the recipient. Not this one. See the t-shirt in the upper right hand corner? The t-shirt came to me runs and all. This is the result of using paint pens/markers that were not permanent or were not set properly. Fortunately, I thought to run a damp white cloth across one of the letters before throwing it in the wash. Nuh-uh. I spot cleaned the marks on the pink t-shirt instead.
Future note to self – test paint pen t-shirts for color fastness before cutting up. Offer to launder with dye set solution for an extra fee.
