Not A Knit: The T-Shirt Quilt - FINISHED!

 So it's only been an actual age, but I finished the T-shirt quilt!

Inside is a thrift store flannel blanket that I got for $1.50 (much cheaper than cotton batting -- I don't think I've ever used quilt batting, I just use old blankets! that I trimmed to fit. She has an old black sheet as a back which I chose not to photograph because... it's just black. The outside is blue quilt binding. 

The reason she took me so long is because she wouldn't fit in my machine to quilt, so I ended up quilting the center stripes of diamonds by hand. The outside went much faster once I could put it on the machine. I did one half of the binding by hand as well, with the first side put on by machine and the second side felled down invisibly -- on the black side, which was a mistake, because it was very hard to see my own stitches. 

I'm very pleased with how she turned out; I'm cosied down in bed underneath this quilt as I write. I do hope you all find ways to use your own scraps and odds and ends as happily as I did!

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!