I made this quilt for a young man who played sports throughout high school and college. He wanted to remember those years, but didn't feel the need to keep wearing shirts and jerseys from high school and college. He delivered more than 30 shirts to me, and I got to work!
I started by washing and drying all the shirts. All of my quilts are designed to be machine washable, so I wanted to make sure anything that might happen to the shirts would happen before I started the quilt. One of the jerseys was ruined in the wash - the lettering fell off! The rest came out just fine.
Next, I cut the shirts into 12.5" squares (to make 12" finished squares). Two of the shirts has a somewhat larger design, so I made a double-sized block that combined a larger design with a smaller one. I layered the thinnest jerseys over t-shirt knit recycled from the plain backs of other shirts.
I laid everything out in my living room, and arranged and rearranged until I liked how the colors were distributed. Then I got to sewing! Large 12" blocks generally come together easily, but because all the fabrics were different - some silky, some thick, and all with different amount of stretch - I did a LOT of pinning to make sure they would come together nicely. I don't know many quilters who work with high-performance athletic materials!
I chose royal purple minkie for the backing, and a thick batting. This quilt is designed for ultimate comfort!
To quilt the layers together, I sewed a 2" plus sign in each of the corners. This allows the quilt to be able to stretch, but still keeps everything from moving around during washing.
I bound the quilt with black jersey knit. This step took me over a year...it might be time to learn machine binding. Toddlers don't help the process either :)
I really love how this quilt came out. It's fun, super comfortable and snuggly, and a great way to hold onto fond memories (without wearing your old jerseys in public).
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