What a surprise when out of the blue Spencer asked me to make him a t-shirt quilt. His request: to put all of his band shirts into a quilt. Of all the people who would ask for a quilt, I never expected Spencer to be one of them.
Of course, I'll make him a quilt.
I had already made two t-shirt quilts for others so I thought this wouldn't be too difficult.
When I received his bag of shirts, I almost reneged. Every one of the shirts were XXL. The shirts were huge! In addition, every one of them were black except one. In the sea of black, they all were very colorful.
However, a promise is a promise, and this was a great opportunity to do something that would bless Spencer.
When I did the prior t-shirt quilts, each shirt (block) was the same size with sashing. For this one, I wanted to showcase the shirts, but they were so large. The saving grace - all of the shirts were black so no sashing was needed which would aid in keeping the size from growing any larger.
I set about ironing stabilizer to all the shirts.
I laid out the shirts in a design that would work and took a photo and sent it to Spencer. We had several texts messages going back and forth because he wanted specific band shirts to be featured as well as be placed next to the other shirts of the same band. He would mark the photos with green (definite), yellow (possible) and red (eliminate). Finally, we came to an agreement of the best layout that he liked.
With Spencer's all-black wardrobe, black was the only fabric that I felt would work for the backing and binding. Many fabric stores were out of black fabric, but finally I found some online that could be ordered.
The next obstacle - how to get the finished quilt to Spencer in Southern California. It was so heavy that I did not want to mail it.
Keith and I were taking vacation to Colorado to visit my family, I took along my sewing machine and Spencer's quilt to do the quilting.
I still am only able to do stitch in the ditch quilting. In addition, I knew that Spencer would not want intricate quilting or a design across the shirts themselves. I stitched in the ditch around each block then strategically placed stitches along the straight lines on the t-shirt images so that there would be support for the blocks yet not be seen until you looked closer. Stitching with black thread on black fabric is challenging because it is hard to see your stitches.
The binding was finished as we traveled by car for 14 hours from Colorado to Southern California to see our kids before heading home again.
Well, the quilt was a hit with Spencer. He loved it.
Because of the weight of the quilt, it wouldn't be used much as a bed quilt living in Southern California. On a whim, I asked him if he would like it as a wall hanging/curtain. He liked that idea, so we added a hanging sleeve and put it on the curtain rod. This was a high compliment that he liked it so much that he would see it every day.
Spencer also posted a photo of the quilt on a Facebook page of Heavy Metal bands. He said 1200 people liked the photo and many commented. His caption - "Thank you Mom for the dopest quilt. Band shirts recycled."
Every quilt tells a story. This is the story of making a black t-shirt quilt with XXL shirts for my son, showing up on a heavy metal band Facebook page, and hearing the 3 most beautiful words ever, "Thank you Mom."
Comments
Post a Comment