Halloween Quilt

When I was at Grandad's house late July/early September, Mom and I went through some of Granni's fabric. I was hoping for certain kinds but you never know what's in that big stash of hers. When we came across the Halloween fabric, I was so excited. I've wanted to make a Halloween quilt for a while but Halloween fabric can be expensive. She also had a pack of flannel fat quarters. I originally thought they would be a quilt of their own, but I used about half of those to back this. I also wanted to use a different design but the fabric that had cats and pumpkins kind of decided how big the rectangles got. I like how it turned out, though. It's a nice blanket to cuddle under and dream of Halloween.

Mickey Mouse Quilt

Happy birthday, Luke! As you can see, I made this for him. This guy turned two and he's awesome. I'm lucky to have awesome nieces and nephews.

I had no idea what to make for this kid. I was trying to think of things to crochet for him, but to no avail. Then I remembered the Mickey Mouse fabric I got from Granni's stash. It turned out to work so well. This kid LOVES Mickey Mouse. When he opened it up, he was pretty excited. His Dad decided to lay it on the ground and he laid right on it. I guess he liked it. ;)

Another Go at a T-shirt Quilt

Sorry for the poor photo quality. I didn't want to dirty it by taking it outside.

 Finally got around to finishing the next t-shirt quilt adventure. I've made one before, but I had a pile of shirts that kept on growing. I wasn't wearing them anymore due to the shirt's being old or I just didn't want to anymore. I wasn't planning on making this now but I had been making some t-shirt yarn from the leftovers of the shirts from the previous quilt that I went on to these shirts to do the same. The quilt just happened.

As you can see this quilt looks a lot different from the other one. A lot of these shirts have so many different sizes of images that the same layout wouldn't work. So I grouped shirts where I knew the images would make the same sized squares or rectangles. I laid them on the ground and knew immediately that I had to fill in the spaces of the rows. I found some old shorts and leftover materials from previous projects and decided to add them to the quilt. People who read the blog might recognize some of them. ;)

This time I decided that I wanted to interface all of the shirts before I sewed them. Not only did this allow me to cut the squares/rectangles nicely, but it stabilized them rather well. There wasn't nearly as much stretching as the other quilt. There was a tiny bit because I was getting lazy and not holding the iron down long enough for the interfacing to adhere completely. Seriously, though. SIX yards of interfacing. Oi.

And I couldn't help but think of someone while I was making this quilt. She passed away in May and was known for making all kinds of things for her family. Quilts were one of the things that she did the most. A lot of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren have one made by her. They're something special now that she isn't on earth anymore. So I decided to pay a tribute in the bottom right corner of the quilt with some hand-embroidery. Love you, Granni.

A Mission Quilt

My little brother will be coming home from his LDS Mission in 2 weeks and I thought that it would be fun to make him something for when he gets back. I have been pretty bad at sending him stuff all of the time and I wanted to make it up to him. I had sent some Christmas and one thing for a birthday, but I had missed other times. I decided to make him a Mission Quilt. I figured that he could use it when he goes to college.

I came up with a pattern that would get the most pictures and still letting them be big enough to see. I used iron-on paper for the images (and that was battle half of the time). I then painted the letters on the big squares. I found some plaid fabric at the DI (Deseret Industries) for really cheap and go the white at JoAnn's. There are three kinds of plaid, which is shown in the last image. I cut all of the fabric one day and then sewed them the next. I had to hurry to get it done since Amber and the kids were coming the day after sewing. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. It's about 6' x 8' and should be plenty big for him even if he comes back a couple inches taller. ;)

Memories Quilt

I finally got a chance to make myself another quilt. I have only made one big quilt and a smaller one in the past. Those quilts were probably easier than this one. The main reason is that they were both made with squares of the same size. This one is definitely not all the same size.

I call this my 'Memories Quilt' because it is made with t-shirts, denim, and fabrics that all have some memories attached to them. Lots of the t-shirts are from Youth Conference, Girl's Camp, and high school. There are some that were from trips we made as a family, but in reality they still happened when I was in high school.

It took me a total of 3 days to finish this quilt. I did most of the cutting on the first day; sewing and cutting the front on the second day; and then basting and putting the edging on the third day. This quilt is BIG, too. It's a little over 5' wide and 8' tall. It'll definitely be nice to take out at school since it will fit over my bed there nicely. And it will be good to have to lay out on the grass with or take to football games to stay warm. ;)

Want to know how I did it? You can see that a lot of the pieces are the same size. I made piles of shirts that I knew would fit in the same template size; each row was a pile. Since I was doing four across for the t-shirts I knew it would be good to use the scrap fabrics I had to make triangular pieces. (These pieces were already triangles because they were headbands in the past.) I was able to also get more fabrics on the quilt that way. When you enlarge the picture you'll see that some of the pieces had to be made to fit into their square shapes. I just used fabric from the same t-shirt to make it less apparent. Then I sewed the rows together and then the rows to each other. When you get that part done you need a bottom layer of fabric and batting. I trimmed those to the same size as the top and use a yarn darner to bast some yarn through all three layers. Then you pin and sew on the edging!

To be honest it really is an easy project. You just have to make sure that you have the time to actually do it. I like how mine turned out and now this way my t-shirts and fabrics will last a lot longer!