This is a short update on the sloth t-shirt quilt.
For the fabric around the shirts, my friend likes apple green, among many colors, so I thought it would be a good match. Normally I go for darker colors when making the frames and borders, but since there’s so much room here I think it’ll look nice.
For me, there’s not much else that compliments apple green better than beige. So for the complimentary fabric, I chose an unbleached muslin. I love how it has texture and little flecks in it.
I’ve framed the shirts so far and made most of the blocks for the other parts of the top. I have about four blocks left to make before I can assemble the top.
The sloth quilt is going to be on hold for a bit while I get a more time-sensitive commission taken care of. I’ll post updates on that as well. Stay tuned!
I’m at the beginning stages of a sloth t-shirt quilt and thought I’d share. This one isn’t a surprise, so I can post along the way.
I’ve seen some online tutorials and such on t-shirt quilts, but unless the person is an actual quilter they all forget one thing: stabilizer. T-shirts are made of jersey knit fabric, and that stuff likes to curl, shift, and stretch. So you NEED stabilizer to make your shirts look properly flat and keep the picture straight.
I’m cutting these blocks in a smaller one than usual. They’ll be 12″x12″.
I am happy when shirts are such as I don’t have to re-center them or add on fabric at the neck and shoulders so that everything is squared properly. It makes for a quick evening’s work!
When I went to my crafting weekend the other week, I started several quilts. Most of them I had to finish once I returned home because I was short on one type of fabric or another. Well I’ve been busy getting those settled and ready.
I three more stadium quilts. One is blue and silver with crepe back satin backing – the color of one of the local high schools.
Blue and Gray Lap Quilt
Another one is maroon, black, and gold themed. It is the colors and mascot of one of the local high schools. It’s the section in which my church is located, and it’s also where my husband and many of my friends went. (My county is huge, and we have a ridiculous amount of schools.)
Brookwood High Broncos
The third one is another school’s colors -black and silver/gray. Those colors can be bland if you don’t use them correctly. In this case, I made simple blocks and used a pretty gray patterned fabric for the sashing to add texture and interest.
Black and Gray Lap Quilt
Another one I made using the split rail (aka rail fence) design, and it’s garden themed. I also used the cute pink fabric as part of the backing as well.
Garden Fence Lap Quilt
I have two others that are done, but I ran out of daylight to take pictures. I’ll check in tomorrow with their pictures.
I plan on selling these at the craft fairs or on my Etsy shop.
I’ve made a couple of wine-themed quilts in addition to a coffee-themed quilt. They’re fun. The first one I made was really and truly a whim. I was sitting at my sewing area and saw two fabrics that made me think of wine. One was some label-print fabric meant to mimic the old wine bottle labels. I’d bought too much of it for a different project, and it had been folded up for a couple of years with nothing in mind. The second fabric was a textured purple fabric from a completely different project – a t-shirt quilt. But they looked so pretty next to one another that I dropped whatever I was working on and began making squares. I loved the contrast!
A couple of days later I went out to JoAnns because I remembered they had wine-themed fabric. I found one I liked and gave the quilt top a small border around the edges to tie together the front and back. The fabric has the phrase “Like wine I get better with age.” I thought it was particularly cute. I used a close stipple with variegated purple thread to quilt it together.
Normally I use the fold-over method for my binding, but this one needed a more traditional one, so I kept up the purple fabric for this purpose.
“Just like wine, I get better with age.”
Wine themed lap quilt – alternating frames style
This quilt was bought on my Etsy store for a wife’s birthday!
I have a second wine quilt for sale on my Etsy store right now. Like the first one, the second was made on a bit of a whim. I was speaking with a client at JoAnns, and we were standing beside one of the fabric bins that hold all of their jelly rolls. I looked over and spied a wine-themed jelly roll, and I thought it was pretty cute. So I decided to grab a couple and see what I could make.
At first I had planned on making a rail fence design, and that’s why I originally had cut the stripes and sewn them together in blocks. But I realized it wasn’t going to look like what I had envisioned, so I stepped back and decided to make a more modern design. I went back and forth on whether to use black stripes in between the rows or wine-colored fabric. I polled my ever-patient husband, and we both agreed that the black made a better frame and helped the different colors from the fabric stand out. I did a rotating pattern and liked the staggering design that came out as a result.
For the backing on this one, the colors were different from the backing on the first quilt, so I chose a wine-glass themed flannel instead.
Just like the first one, I used a close stipple and maroon thread to quilt it together. Then I put on the black binding and was all set.
This was a Christmas present commission I received as a result of the Lilburn Daze craft fair. The client met me and had a huge bag of baby clothes. Then she said what I consider music to my ears, “I trust you.” She was letting me have complete artistic freedom! I had several ideas for baby clothes, but there were factors that helped narrow it down to this style.
For starters, some of the clothes had already been cut, and they were different sizes, so making a basic quilt with the same square shape was most likely out. The sheer number of clothes would probably have been a factor as well. I noticed that several of the clothes needed to feature the front or had a cute pattern, and those would need to be in a spot that featured them. So in the end, I followed the same route as I did with the Artist’s Memory Quilt. I divided the clothes up into differing colors or themes; there were so many of the blue and red that they made two squares.
When you have a lot of fabrics and a small space to put them, then crazy quilt style is the way to go. I was still a big fan of the shadowbox style, and I knew it would help make the blocks look extra cool. I somehow managed to work in all of the clothes from that huge, full bag of baby clothes.
The last request the client had was the have the phrase “You and me against the world” somewhere on the quilt. The things is…shadowboxes are tricky, and their illusion of being 3-D relies on nothing else being around the block. So having the words somewhere highly visible would ruin the 3-D aspect. So I decided to have the phrase worked in via a more subtle way. I wrote the phrase in while quilting between two of the rows. I just wrote it in cursive, so the phrase is there and the shadowboxes are in full effect.
A simple textured blue for the backing and binding brings everything together!
I know I mentioned “stadium quilts” in a previous post, so I figured I’d go ahead and discuss them. As said before, the whole idea of a stadium quilt is that it is usually in school colors and is 4’x4′. This isn’t the usual size of a lap quilt, but the logic was that at 4’x4′ it would be big enough to cover your lap while sitting on those wonderfully comfortable bleachers at football games while also being small enough not to drag around or have folks stepping on them. Of course, they also happen to be the perfect size for draping over the back of a couch or chair.
I happen to work for a particularly large school system that has over 20 different high schools. (This still baffles me as I graduated from an area with one high school for the whole darn county!) That being said, I figured that if I stuck to the basic colors of the local schools I’d happen to catch most professional and college team colors as well. One thing I know for sure – you Buckeye fans sure do love your Etsy stores. I probably get more hits on my Etsy store from Buckeye fans than from any other team.
When I decided to make the stadium quilt, I had two goals in mind. 1. Make some smaller quilts to sell ready-made on Etsy as well as at craft shows. My original lot was around 14 or so. 2. Use up as much of my fabric stash as I could without buying any more except for backing. I’ve mostly stuck to this, but I haven’t been able to resist the occasional gold or gray since they’re so wonderfully useful. I’ve also taken to strolling by the remnant bin at JoAnn’s and seeing if there’s any generic quilting fabric that is handy. The remnant bin and I are now officially old friends.
I also took some time and experimented with a new design – the “split rail,” aka the “rail fence.” I really liked it and had fun using it more. I also experimented using both cotton backing and flannel. After all, if the idea was to stay warm during games, then flannel was the way to go. In addition to my newfound appreciation for flannel, I also found that I simply LOVE crepe back satin. I used it in a couple of quilts and like the texture and sheen of it.
One color combo I was surprised looked as good as it did was the orange and blue. For the back of it, I found an orange and white tie-dye style flannel, and it looked great! I do think the rail fence styles look prettier overall.
Blue and Gray Lap Quilt #2
orange and blue stadium quilt – rail fence style
maroon and gold stadium quilt
green, gold, and navy blue checkerboard stadium quilt
green and gold stadium quilt
American flag themed stadium quilt
blue, gray, and white stadium quilt – quarters style
purple and gray stadium quilt – rail fence style
Red and black rail fence stadium quilt
Red, gray, and white stadium quilt – rail fence style
Red, gray, and white stadium quilt – quarters style
Maroon and gold checkerboard stadium quilt
Plaid flannel backing
Related Posts – mostly about using up your fabric stash:
My current situation is strange – much stranger than usual. I have a crafting weekend at the end of March, and last time I spent too much time cutting and not sewing. So this time I plan on mostly sewing. To get a head start, I’ve been making “kits” of precut fabric all ready to assemble. I’m up to 14 kits in various stages of readiness.
Last year I made around 14 4’x4′ quilts I called “stadium quilts”. The idea was that they were all in local school colors and could be used at games. They were big enough to cover a lap but small enough not to drag on the stadium steps. I’ve sold all those, so I plan on making more as well as some traditional lap quilt sizes. I’ve been having fun and trying to use up a fair amount of my stash to boot!
I think the kits are definitely the way to go. I have already “broken in to” a couple of them.
Quest Quilts 
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