Throwback Thursdays: T-shirt Quilts

 

I made my first t-shirt quilt in 1996.  It was something of a collaborative effort, as a group of online friends donated t-shirts and the finished quilt was raffled off as a fund-raiser.  This is the quilt top before quilting.  I'm amused to see I used a multi-color, pieced inner border - a technique I'm still using today!

 

This quilt also traveled to Key West, Florida with our group and the lucky winner got to take it home.  I don't remember what group received the money raised by the raffle.  For a closer look at the t-shirts, click on the picture.

 

I so enjoyed the t-shirt quilt process - I made another one almost immediately!  This one features an assortment of Caribbean Soul Jimmy Buffett t-shirts.  

 

I pieced together some of the smaller designs to make a block that would fit in with the other, larger t-shirt designs.

  

One of my favorite Caribbean Soul designs - I don't have to worry about the t-shirt being worn to shreds, it will always be a part of my quilt!  You can't see it real well, but the background fabric was an early batik featuring multi-colored fish.

 

I also used the pocket designs as border cornerstones. 

 

Five years ago, I dug into the collectible t-shirt bin to make a quilt for our camp.  Most of these shirts are from the mid-1990s and commemorate music and road trips between Florida, Louisiana and Texas.

 

Another favorite shirt, from Mi Tierra's Restaurant in San Antonio, Texas.

(Ha!  I just looked at their website and they still have the same t-shirt!)

 

It seems using the pocket designs for cornerstones is one of my signature techniques!

I still have a LARGE basket full of already cut t-shirt fronts & backs, plus drawers full of my kids' t-shirts.   I need to get busy and make more t-shirt quilts!!

 

 

 

 

 

TBT: First Quilt Show

In my early years as a quilter, I was lucky to be a member of a supportive quilt group, the Pensacola Quilter's Guild.  The guild was relatively small, but had a wonderful cross-section of quilters - from new quilters like me to professionals who taught classes all over the country and authored quilt books.  The guild put on a judged show every two years, and as a new quilter I was encouraged to enter a quilt "for the experience of it!". 

 

I had been working on a quilt from Variations on Irish Chain Quilts by Betty Jo Shiell.  I decided to finish the quilt and enter it in the upcoming show, scheduled for March, 1991. 

 

I remember working feverishly to finish the hand quilting in the white center blocks in time for the quilt drop-off date!

As so often happens with quilts hanging in quilt shows - the picture doesn't do the quilt justice.  The pink and green print was soft and feminine, perfect for a baby girl's crib quilt.  I used both machine and hand quilting on the project, but I do remember the judge criticized my quilt for not having enough quilting in the border.  I knew that - I had just run out of time to do any more quilting!  Still, I received a third place ribbon - because there were only two quilts entered in that category!

The quilt was gifted to a baby girl, the new daughter of some good friends.  I still have the ribbon, as well as the program from the show.  It was a treat to leaf through the program and remember quilters and their quilts from "back in the day" - and reminiscing is all part of the fun on Throwback Thursday!

BTW, if you enjoy reminiscing about your personal quilt history - consider creating a TBT post and linking up via Diane's blog, Butterfly Threads!

TBT: Early Round Robin Quilt

Since it's Thursday, I'm taking inspiration from social media sites and Diane at Butterfly Threads:

Throwback Thursday!

 

I re-discovered this oldie recently when I was organizing and de-cluttering my sewing room.  It has an interesting history, but is not one of my all-time favorite quilts.  And yes, the outer borders don't lay flat.  I don't remember exactly what happened to cause the curling, but maybe some serious blocking would improve things.

 

The quilt was part of a round robin that took place in 1995.  A friend in the Pensacola Quilter's Guild was friends with the editor (at the time) of the Japanese quilting magazine, Patchwork Quilt Tsushin.  The plan was to have a group of American and Japanese quilters do an international round robin project.  There were 6 quilters in Pensacola and 6 Japanese quilters.  Each quilter created a center block, then the round robin fun started. 

 

The quilts swapped countries at least once and were passed around between different quilters in each location.  One of the best things about the project was the additional fabrics that were shared between all the participants.  Remember, this was before the internet made it easy to drool over and purchase fabric from around the world!

 

Our final quilts were published in Patchwork Quilt Tsushin.  The article about the round robin is all in Japanese, so I can't read it to remind myself of all the details!  Some of the quilts were quite lovely, others just so-so.  I think the idea of round robin quilts was so new we just weren't sure what to do.  Maybe the time factor and size requirements (my finished quilt is only about 45-48" square) also limited our creativity.

 

I machine quilted my finished top and found this really colorful batik fabric for the back.  Batik fabrics for quilts were kind of a novelty at this time and I was really excited to find this fabric.

It was fun to re-discover this quilt and reminisce about the events behind it.  I guess that's the whole idea of Throwback Thursday!