The Quilt, Part 4

Oh so much has happened on this quilt since I last posted in ... good gravy has it been 3 months? Well, truth be told, it's been three months since I actually worked on it too.

But this week, BREAKTHROUGH! Peep the results:


To begin, I took the images and cut them into their own squares, like the one below:


Now alls I need to do is cut up the rest of the pieces before I wreak massive sewing machine carnage over the unsuspecting fabrics.

But this is the stage where quilt fantasy meets quilt reality, and dies in a fiery crash. Creating a quilt entirely out of old t-shirts requires conserving your material as much as possible to maximize its use.

This means I needed to do (or not do) a couple things:

• Measure out ahead of time so you don't leave odd-shaped pieces of fabric that are no good,


• Use t-shirts with enough material for your project,


• And DON'T make ANY cutting mistakes such as forgetting your seam allowances.

I failed at all three points. My Taiwanese t-shirt suffered from odd-shaped fabric, and poor planning. My Red Hook t-shirt suffered from poor cutting. My Flaming Lips t-shirt suffered from having large images on the front and back, leaving little blank material to use.

All of this would have been manageable on its own, but I did it all in one night. So there were a few major changes to be made. I used a lot more material from my Andrew Bird shirt than intended for one, but I'm hoping it doesn't overwhelm the entire design.

I've got about 12 more pieces to cut. After that I'll look over the whole design, do some market testing (read: get Megan to look at it and tell me if it sucks) and determine any last minute changes.

This could involve:

• Shifting a couple colors around and redesigning a couple shapes,


• Replacing some of the squares with denim fabric from old jeans,


• Or crying, taking six months of work and tearing it to pieces before burning it in a fiery pyre in the flats of Skagit Valley while playing "Taps" on a bugle

Obviously the last option is a last resort. But the other two are possibilities.