Not a Knit: The T-Shirt Quilt

Hello all! I've been gone for a bit, but in my defence, I did some pretty hefty exams and then moved across an ocean, which always has a bit of a topsy-turvy effect on my schedule. Additionally, once I got home, I was confronted by my sewing machine and a pile of scraps I've been putting off dealing with for ages.

It was time to conquer the scrap pile. This was mostly pieces of t-shirt left from making tarn - the shoulders and yoke.

First of all, I had to find pieces that were large enough. Anything that couldn't fit a 3x3 inch square (about 7.6 square centimetres) was put into a separate bag for use stuffing pillows and toys later.

Scraps: The tinier they are, the better they fluff up when used as stuffing later.

T-shirts stretch. This is fortunate when they're still a t-shirt, but when trying to sew anything out of their scraps, the stretch will easily deform your shapes. Each scrap was pressed flat, and an iron-on stabiliser added. Stabiliser keeps the t-shirt, well, stable, allowing one to cut it to a specific size without fear of deformation.

In this case, if you hadn't guessed, my shape was 3-inch squares. Lots of them. 400 or so, to be exact. I just worked until I ran out of scraps. All the pieces too small to be used were added to my stuffing bag.

Squares: And this isn't even all of them!

Next came arranging. I laid out my squares three times in different arrangements, but I finally settled on a gradient, almost a rainbow from red to black.

Arranging: This took me five hours or so. Every time I made a mistake, I'd have to re-start, because I had a limited amount of squares to work with.

I'm still sewing, so I can't show you my final result yet, but I'll check back in with photographs, but here's a teaser.

Sewing: Six rows down!

 Right now I'm also working on my first pair of hand-knit tube socks, so I'm excited to share those with you and see how the heel works.

Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time!