Tee shirt quilts…charming or cheesy? I’ll admit to leaning towards cheesy until I noticed I had a lot of concert tees that I never wore. Seriously—I must have 50 concert tees. Worse still—most of them are for the same band! When  I started thinking about it, that’s a lot of fabric. A lot of expensive fabric. A  concert tee at $25 a pop,  yikes! I won’t do the math because that is just embarrassing! But a tee shirt quilt—what a great way to keep those shirts and make them useful while embracing my inner Wilco super fan. 

Picking out which shirts to use was easy. I just chose the most colorful or graphic tees. I wanted to keep it simple so I decided to use 20 shirts (4rows wide by 5 rows high), each cut into 15×15 inch squares. Some of the shirts were too small and I didn’t want to use any sashing, so I cut strips from the backs of the shirts and pieced them together to make up the difference. I wanted it to look clean and simple and really showcase each shirt. I used a lightweight fusible on the backs and sewed those babies together. 

I was in love with it. I could not believe I used to really not like tee shirt quilts. I was so amped up I decided to quilt this myself. Wilco has a song called “Hummingbird” and I thought yeah, get some hummingbird fabric for the back. Then I remembered I  already had Tula Pink’s wideback, Freefall in navy, with swallows in my stash; and you know it was close enough.

Quick aside — I just want to express my love for wideback fabric! I am definitely not one to make a second a quilt top for the back of a quilt. I want the front to stand out and be the focal point so I love to use a wideback fabric. On a side note,  I’m also kind of lazy and just want to finish my quilt – not fuss over piecing something together (although I will do that on occasion). 

My quilting plan was simple—straight lines diagonally through every corner on each from left to right and vice versa. I laid it out and pinned the layers as my back ached but progress was being made! I started quilting. It was going sort of ok. A little bunch was happening here and there but I kept going thinking I could live with it.  Then I came to a shirt with an especially sticky decal—how to describe what happened?! It was a disaster. Worse than just a teensy bit of bunching. I stopped sewing. I felt sad. My Wilco quilt was ruined? No—I picked out about 500 stitches. Then I jerry rigged everything by putting paper over the decal and I tried to quilt it  again. This also did not work. I took out around 500 more stitches and put painters tape over the decal. Surely it would just glide through the machine! Nope. No no no. 

It was ruined. I gave up. I threw my Wilco quilt in a  corner. I moped. My assistant Jeff looked at me, obviously disappointed (he gives a side eye like no other). Eventually, I went back and picked up the quilt and started picking out all the stitches. How many stitches? I will say around 4million. It took me some time—like all of season three of Breaking Bad. Once all the stitches were out,  I ironed it, found a great long arm service, picked out a cool simple waves pattern (like soundwaves) and sent it off. And, it was worth it!

My quilt came back to me so crisp and professional looking—like someone really knew what they were doing! I trimmed it, attached the binding and woot! It was complete! 

You guys—I LOVE this quilt so much. So here is to the humble tee shirt quilt! Cheers!