Custom Military T-Shirt Quilt

Let me start by saying as a general rule I don’t do T-shirt quilts. I find them to be surprisingly expensive, a pain to work on and lacking in the freedom of creativity department. Don’t get me wrong I appreciate them and the memories they hold I just don’t enjoying making them. However when I received an email a few months back from a longtime friend of mine I made an exception, with some minor hesitation.

After agreeing to make the quilt, I met her at my local quilt shop to discuss a plan. The quilt was to be a surprise for her husband’s 60^th birthday and luckily for me she was able to sneak out all black t-shirts to work with. I have to admit I may have thrown a little party in my head when I saw that, no dealing with a million colors just simple black shirts with mostly primary color designs.

Her husband likes things simple, so we decided on a black border and plain grey sashing with red and blue cornerstones for just a pop of color. Binding was to be the same as the border, the backing was an extra wide black minky, and the entire thing quilted with an allover meander.

In addition since I was only given 16 shirts to work with I needed to figure out a design that wasn’t boring, yet used as much of the T-Shirts as I could. I messed around with ideas until I had a plan (which required one more big block) so I embroidered an extra piece of shirt and created a block with the general’s name.

This was also my first experience quilting a quilt backed in minky, and I have to say I loved the end result. I had minimal shifting of the minky and the nap of the fabric hides minor mistakes and thread start and stops (win-win if you ask me). I also loved the meander pattern because it created a subtle camo effect which is better than I was hoping for especially since it is for a military man.

All around I am happy I made the quilt, although it was a good reminder of why I don’t usually accept them for commissions. There were parts that were definitely a pain in the butt (really most of it before I started sewing with a walking foot), but the look on my friend’s face when I presented it to her was worth all the work. She is thrilled with the quilt and cannot wait to give it to her husband tomorrow, and I can’t wait to hear what he thinks!