a quilt and a love story

After several years, numerous spools of thread, and count less chopped up baby clothes, I finally finished Clara's quilt! It's been finished for over a month (or two!), and I thought I might as well share it with the world.  I couldn't really sum everything up with a quick facebook post and a few pictures though.   The more we looked it over and snuggled under it, the more I loved it.  Which in turn made me want to blab on and on about, so why not put the ole blog to use!

Without further ado...our first Tshirt quilt!

Of course it is just a quilt.  Sewn to keep her warm, super warm, in fact.  This Tshirt quilt is actually much warmer than the other "regular" quilts we have.  I'm guessing that the interfacing, although lightweight, adds an extra layer of warmth.  I personally love how heavy it feels, but overall it is still a thin quilt.

I am not a quilter.  And to be honest, probably not that great of a sewist either.  However, I love sewing, and I loved using up all our much loved Tshirts, dresses, onesies and blankets to make a new quilt.  I can't help but get a little emotional at bed time, when we look over the squares and talk about who gave us the shirts, or when we wore them.

Seriously, do you remember this little face?!

Now, every time I pull up the covers to tuck her in, I do.

I even attempted some hand quilting (but don't look too close!)

I love it, she loves it, mission accomplished!

with apologies to those who sew...

We're making a quilt!  Let me rephrase that, we are attempting to make a quilt!  With a little luck, and a lot of internet searches, I'm hoping that something cute comes out of all of this...only time will tell!
After a lot of fretting, and years of holding on to my favorite baby/little kid clothes, I've decided we're going to make them into a t-shirt quilt.  I have piles of Clara's old shirts that I really really love.  I can't give them away. I see her cute little baby face when I look at them and I always want to remember that chubby little face.  
Anyway, here is a sampling of what I have in the pile.




First, I am cutting off the front panel of all the shirts.  I've just been cutting up the side seams, then around the top and back down the other side.  This has given me a huge pile of what looks like some very sad tank tops...

Then I cut out the design part of the shirt, trying to get the biggest panel I can.  There has been some measuring and line drawing, but I haven't been too careful.  I'm hoping to be able to piece it together in some cool/funky kind of way.  I'm not following any specific directions, just really going with the flow of things...This part has become very tedious, and I think I need a rotary cutter before we go too much further.  There is a fine line between "funky" and "messy" that I don't want to cross.

We're stabilizing the fabric with interfacing that was recommended on a t-shirt quilt "how-to" blog I found.  This involves pinning, Clara's new favorite activity!

Eventually, we hope to have enough pieces to make a quilt...but we're not working on any kind of timeline, so no promises on when it will be done!