Wrapped up in Memories and T-shirts

I know there's no need to explain why I haven't blogged for six months, but I'm giving in to the urge, mainly because I'm quite proud of it.  There hasn't been much sewing going on but I'm now a quarter of a social worker.  In addition to this, I as of yesterday can ride a skateboard.  The latter is possibly the the most exciting thing that has happened to me in the last decade, although it might just seem that way because it happened yesterday.  My final achievement is making this pair of t-shirt quilts.

I'd like to credit the idea of making a quilt to my friend Kate at Felt Funny who made a beautiful quilt from her husband's band t-shirts.  I got the how from instructables.com, which I found really clear and easy.

My younger son tends to pick a favourite t-shirt and wear it until it's a crop top and I have to hide it while he's sleeping.  The quilt was a great excuse to pry a few t-shirts off him and capture a few fond memories for me.  He was disappointed when the orange t-shirt at the top of his quilt re-emerged cut up.  He had been planning to wear it that week, despite the fact that it was a size four and he's a tall seven year old.

In general I try not to sew for my children.  It isn't fair to expect them to appreciate the time and money that has gone into a finished product.  However, for this project I aimed to buy nothing new.  The materials were; kids t-shirts (obviously), an incredibly scratchy blanket that our family decided belonged to us, an old bed sheet and embroidery thread I bought to make friendship bands with in the early 90s.

I also knew I would be happy to use the quilts myself once they were rejected.  Possibly sensing my interest however, my kids went for the idea, they're suckers for anything soft.  On the day I delighted my younger son by presenting him with his blanket he also "mmmm"ed a dip a had made, I nearly fell over from shock.

I took a few photos of the blanket-making process, proper sewing blog-style.  Unfortunately I forgot about this shortly afterwards and deleted them.  Luckily I have never intended to produce a sewing tutorial.  Here is what I have left, my quilt-making montage.

And again

Experimenting with layouts

And here's some extreme close ups of my work.  I made my own bias binding for the first time, which I was hugely excited about.  Everything I make has a hurdle that trips me up at the very end.  In this case it was the application of the bias binding, too flexible for its own good.  I fought my usual inclination to bodge it and and persisted till I was pretty proud, minus one mutant mitred corner, but  sometimes it's time to say........  it'll do, move on.

A perfect mitred corner

A mutant mitred corner