April OMG Finished

Yes!  I did finish my April OMG at least a week before the deadline.  My goal was to finish my customer's Alabama T-Shirt quilt.  I finished it over the weekend and my customer picked it up Tuesday.  She was thrilled.  I sent her this photo of it the day I let her know it was done.  She immediately posted it to her Facebook account and started getting all sorts of comments about it.  Her Alabama fans love it.  I have to admit I enjoyed these clever  t-shirts.  

I admit I didn't take as many pictures at the beginning as I did at the end.  Here's some of the process I went through.   First up I measured all the elements that were to go into the quilt.  These are mostly backs, but sleeves and small front icons were also included.  Deconstruction was mostly done with my rotary cutter and sometimes scissors.  One thing I was careful with was the shirts with large designs on the back.  I made sure they didn't get cut inadvertently.  I cut them bigger than I needed them to give me some room to change my mind.  

And between cutting, I was thinking.  I measured every element and recorded it based on the smallest it could go.  Once that was done I grabbed graph paper, pencil, and most importantly, an eraser.  I did the paper copy at least twice.  Then I wrote a big note to remind myself when I cut to add the seam allowances! 

Once the plan was figured out it was time to actually construct the top.  I recut to about the needed size and then added the woven stabilizer.  Then I recut to the correct size.  (Yea, three times handling the shirts was a little ridiculous.  Now that I've figured out how to go about this I'd probably only do a rough cut, stabilize and then a final cut.) Below it is beginning to take shape. Nope, the grey as filler doesn't look as good as black...

It was a challenge to get all the rows to end up the same length.  A little tighter seam here, a bigger piece of filler there and they all fit in. Here's the backing fabric. My customer found this houndstooth fabric that matches the hat.  How cool is that?  Except, it was directional.  Once I realized that it was easy to match the design while seaming it.  Lots of fabric! 

I used Classic Stipple by Apricot Moon.  Batting was Pellon 60/40 cotton poly.  I knew the quilt would be heavy so I wanted to lighten it a little using the higher content poly.  

Below is one of my favorite shirts. The top part says something about the schedule.  Read the part in black.  As a fan of University of Southern California football I understand that sentiment.  In fact one of my friends got married on a big game day (USC vs. Notre Dame at home.)  Needless to say a LOT of the guests were gathered round a big television at the reception site. 

Here are a couple of other shots of the quilt.  Unfortunately the weather was cloudy and rainy which made it hard to get a good picture of it.  Plus it is something like 65 by 75" and remember me saying heavy?  That too.

If you look at the right edge you can see that I used the houndstooth to do the binding.  The original plan was for the black but when I saw the houndstooth... well it just seemed right to me. 

I told my customer I'd have it done by May 1st and I succeeded.  I sometimes take my time making quilts or have other items sneak up that must be done.  So I was very happy to have this one finished in advance. I did not label this quilt but now I'm thinking I might want to get some of the printed labels that also have washing instructions to add to the quilt.  What do you think?  Would you add a small label with the quilt maker's info along with washing instructions?  

This post is proudly being linked with One Monthly Goal April Finish linky party, Midweek Makers, and Needle and Thread Thursday. (I'll be back to link up to tomorrow's linky party.)  Enjoy some time browsing the internet in between your sewing time.  

Happy Quilting All!  Bonnie