T-shirt quilt, Part 3

I am soooo close to finishing my quilt but have not made the time to do so. I have made plenty of time for TV shows I do not need to watch, however. Oh, well.

Here are the things I have done since the last post. To refresh your memory, this is where I left off:

I finished putting iron on interfacing on all the pieces in between and then sewed everything together to finish the top. This was a little tricky because somehow the top of my quilt was half an inch narrower than the bottom. This may not seem like a big deal, but I had to work in the difference up the edges sorta evenly. The material still has some stretch to it, even with the interfacing, so it did not lay as flat as I wanted it to. In the end, I had to undo one of the long sides. I really dislike taking out seams, especially big ones. Yuck. I made sure to iron all the seams open before continuing.

In the end, I really like the top though!

I planned to just use fleece for the back and not put any filling in. I got creative at the fabric store and decided on two colors. I was good and washed and dried the fleece, then I trimmed off the edges and sewed the two pieces of fleece together using a stretch stitch. I am really glad I used the stretch stitching on the machine - it is much sturdier!

Then I remembered seeing something about how to do an easy binding for a quilt. The one quilt I made in 4-H did not have binding, as it was put together differently than serious quilters often put together their quilts. I put the quilt top on the fleece at an angle, again, just to be creative I suppose.

And cut the fleece 2 1/2 inches bigger than quilt top to give a 1 inch fleece edge to the quilt in the end (that was the plan). This is essentially what the finished quilt should look like.

Then I moved the top of the quilt. I do not recommend doing this. My bad. When I finally tracked down the tutorial I had found on doing an easy binding, it was too late. I did not understand how people bind quilts because (not to repeat myself or anything) the quilt I had made in elementary school was not put together that way. I am not a fan of hand sewing either, which is how quilt binding is often done, so this tutorial is more my speed.

Anyway, I laid the quilt top as smoothly as I could back on the fleece and pinned everything. Then I used a straight stretch stitch to quilt the long lines of the quilt (i.e., just sew up the edges of the columns of blocks). Action shot!

In the end, I had to trim more of the fleece off because I had moved the quilt top back there a few steps and it was not even all the way around.

The only thing I have left to do is fold over those fleece edges and sew all around the quilt though!

If you do a t-shirt quilt and use fleece, I do recommend using a stretch stitch for these final steps. I can tell that the material is not getting pulled as much as it would with a regular stitch, so hopefully the quilt will last longer!

Previous steps:
Part 1
Part 2

Dangling shiny objects

I am making progress on my quilt, but have been taking other random pictures in the meantime that I feel like sharing because it does not require much thought to post them. Lazy? Sure, but what ever. :-)

CF visited two weekends ago and we spend several hours putting this puzzle together. I literally had to ask him to stop working on it and keep me company while I put some dinner together. I needed to coach him to work together. Funny thing is, every time we switched spots where we were working, we could get huge sections put together. Team work does work.

I picked up some stick-on nail polish. It works pretty well, actually. I do not think you can tell the extent to which this color is fluorescing pink. It is though. I guess the reason it was on clearance was the polish strip in front was extremely faded to make the unknowing purchaser think it was a nice pale pink. Tomorrow I am going to work at a Habitat for Humanity house, so it will get ruined anyway.

 

My mom special ordered soldier beans and shared them around. This particular type of bean is difficult to find (although maybe not in Maine), but it is the specific type of bean that is supposed to be used in the family's baked bean recipe. I used this one two pound bag to try the recipe in my crock pot, and it came out quite well.

A recent trip to Tar-jay revealed these candles to me. I highly recommend them. This one is citrus-y, and I suppose citrus equals happiness?

While some may not, I TOTALLY get Pinterest and love it. I have bookmarked stuff in the past and never think to go back to it. Or when I have a hankering for a recipe, I spend time searching various food sites for it. I have made a lot of things from my pins though. The most recent was this brownie recipe. Usually when I crave baked goods, it is brownies I want. This is a healthier alternative. Next time, I will probably skip the "caramel" topping and add some apple sauce/caramel flavor/chocolate chips/other to the brownie part. This time around, I also used ~ 1/4 c of honey instead of the fake sugar.

 

I have been buying myself flowers. CF does this a lot, but I just tossed our Christmas poinsettia and the rose plant he had given me when I moved into my current apartment. I saw these calla lilies and couldn't resist.

Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food, and medicine for the soul. ~ Luther Burbank, American Horticulturist

Then I started getting all creative and  put out what is probably my favorite song to play on my flute. (That is not me playing...)

 

Last, but not least, my tea is always inspirational...and apparently I have been drinking it since grad school.

I also wonder if this tea is why I was so tired all of a sudden yesterday evening. Maybe the relaxing of the tea works better than I realized?

One time, my grad advisor made some comment about undergrads being easy to work with because you just dangle something shiny in front of them to distract them. Then the undergrad in the lab actually batted at the keys said advisor dangled in front of him. No joke.

T-Shirt quilt, Part 2

I'm getting there on the quilt! I went to the fabric store a couple of weeks ago and replaced the nice sewing scissors I misplaced in my last move. I also went to get fleece that was on sale for the back of the quilt and found some great red and yellow fleeces that should go well with the designs on the shirts.

The woman was helping me decide on how much fabric to get and started asking me about what I was doing. She asked how I was stabilizing the t-shirts, so I mentioned the interfacing I ironed on. I had brought the pieces with me and pulled them out. It was nice to impress the Joann's lady!

Without further ado...She whipped out some numbers about how big a lap quilt is, and it was much smaller than my measurements. So I increased all of the in between strips to 4" final measurement. I also decided to use more t-shirt material for the in between strips since I had it. I spent a lot of time cutting more t-shirt material...then cutting more interfacing...then ironing on the interfacing...

I have been good about pinning things before sewing so they stay in the right place and ironing my seams open so hopefully everything will lay flat in the end. One thing I did not do was stitch the edges of the interfacing and t-shirt material. You can see here that it is coming apart after I sew it and iron it together. Hope it does not end up matting in the end!

I had been working on the quilt on Saturdays, then had to come home early one day last week to meet the plumber here and got a good chunk of the work done that you see above. The top is almost all put together now, so if I make the time this weekend, I might get it close to finished!

T-Shirt quilt, Part 1

I do not know how many parts this project will take, but you will be lucky enough to read about all of them. :-) I have done the New England MS Challenge Walk 8 of the 10 years they have organized it. I get a t-shirt for training and a t-shirt on the last day. I do not wear this many t-shirts often enough to keep letting them take up drawer space, and thought a while back that I could make them into a quilt. After talking about it for a while and getting some quilting supplies for Christmas, I finally started the quilt. I figured I should document the step-by-step because I told my Mom I would make one for her if mine ends up looking good! Plus I can fix the mistakes I have made if I do another.

[Just skip to the last picture if you want to see how far I have gotten but do not care so much about the process.]

An initial search on the internet and Pin-terest provided good guidelines of co-opting stretchy t-shirts for quilts. I planned my own layout because the t-shirts have different sized designs, but am an organized person so went with nice columns. The approximate final measurements of my quilt should be about 24" x 51". I think that might be a small lap quilt? I can still play with the measurements by changing the pieces in between the blocks.

ANYHOO, here is the step-by-step to date.

Last weekend I took my sewing machine out of its box and put all my supplies on the table next to it. I have a new cutting mat, ruler, and rotary cutter. I have been unable to find my good metal sewing scissors, but luckily still have the mediocre orange-handled pair. This is not important to know at all, but I am including the details anyway. I mean, this was step one - unpacking my sewing machine!

Second step was to decide how I wanted the t-shirts organized. I measured all the designs and put little pieces of paper on them so I could figure out how they would fit in two columns. I ended up with chronological order, as if you were reading a book, row by row.

I planned on equal column widths and different heights for each t-shirt.

On to the cutting. When it comes to sewing, cutting is the part I like the LEAST. If you make a mistake, it is possible that it is not fixable. With the t-shirts, you have to remove the sleeves and backs. This is the first t-shirt I did, and figured out the most efficient way to get them cut after this.

The t-shirts did not have any side seams, and the left sleeves have 'ALUMNI' printed on them. So I first removed the left sleeve to use later, then just cut the front off the rest of the shirt, leaving the neck, back, and right sleeve attached - less cutting! I made little white lines on the shirt to help with the cutting.

VERY IMPORTANT: I planned for a 0.5" seam allowance on all sides by adding an inch to each measurement on the little piece of paper you can see in the picture below before cutting so I had the correct numbers in my head. Ironically, this first t-shirt I did that I was super careful about was the only one I cut incorrectly.

After this first shirt, I did the the top cut first, then used the cutting ruler and the lines on the mat to make the process more efficient. That little pile o' fabric under the table grew with each t-shirt. :-)

Because t-shirt material stretches, you need to use fusible backing so that the fabric sews evenly and the final product is sturdier. After cutting all the t-shirts into blocks, I had all the final measurements and cut pieces of fusible backing/interfacing the same sizes.  I did not really want to plan out the entire quilt before buying any fusible backing, and luckily Jo-Anns has these small 10 yard bolts of lightweight fusible interfacing!

This was super easy to cut with the rotary cutter. Next step was ironing all these pieces together. The bolts of interfacing do not come with directions, my 4-H years ended 14 years ago, so thank goodness for the internets. I put the t-shirt pieces face down on the ironing board, the bumpy side of the interfacing down on top of that, then a thing cloth napkin, sprayed that with water, and ironed with a HOT iron pressing down and moving the iron from spot to spot without rubbing. When it comes to applying interfacing, rubbing is bad.

Okay, so the columns were supposed to be 14 inches wide, so the pieces were cut 15 inches wide for the two side-seam allowances. Apparently that first t-shirt with the big 3 on it was cut to be 2 inches short. Then I mis-cut an "ALUMNI" sleeve that I was going to use to fix it, so I had to cut a different sleeve to make up for it (see photo below). :-(

I was going to put the "ALUMNI"s between the designs, but have two fewer now after a couple of mistakes. I think I may just use random pieces of blue t-shirt to fill in all those strips.

At the MS Walk, there are red (or orange) colored shirts for people who have MS and are comfortable disclosing that. The other walkers get blue shirts. I plan to use a red/orange/pink fleece to do the backing and not fill the quilt. Figuring I make one for my Mom, I will probably do the reverse - red and orange top with a blue backing.

This pretty much covers the necessary steps, I think, to prep t-shirt material. I will probably post again when I decide how to fill in the spaces and put the top together.

Healthify

This buffalo chicken dip I made is DELICIOUS and also by no means healthy. I also have quite a bit left over from the football game that shall not be discussed. I thought about making a buffalo chicken grilled cheese, but one could easily argue that's even less healthy. I thought I would just put lettuce on it to make it healthy.

BUT, then I realized I could just cook up some cauliflower in the microwave in a quick 7 minutes on high (mix half way through), chop it up smaller with a spoon, top with some buffalo chicken dip, and heat. With a side of half a cucumber, I figure that is a lot healthier than some of my other options.

Plus I ran today. It was 45 degrees when I got home, so I had to get outside. I usually go by time and not distance. I ran 19 minutes and fast walked 24 minutes. If it was 45 degrees year round, I thought I might, one day, down the road, after lots of hateful words, sorta become a runner. In the meantime, I will just resent the fact that it is probably the cheapest fastest way to try to get back in shape a bit. Add to that this easy ab/arm addition, and maybe I can get rid of this little belly...and make my back stop hurting...and make my hip stop hurting...

...Maybe I'm just getting old.

Kids these days

I have had a few interactions with the less-than-21-crowd recently that leave me a bit...concerned? dismayed? Whatever the right word is, I have been unimpressed.

The biggest 'issue' I have is related to two alumni interviews I did for my alma mater. This is actually the first year I have volunteered to interview, but I know several people who have done it for years. The two applicants were very different, and I had different impressions of who they are and their level of interest in the college after talking with them. For one of the interviews, I had to contact the applicant twice to try to set up a time, AND the applicant was off reading in the library and only found me at the front 15 minutes after we were supposed to meet...as in I guess she thought I would wander around the library asking young women if they were her? Aside from that, the most surprising thing is that neither applicant sent me a thank-you after the interview. They both had my email address and phone number. It would have taken less than five minutes to thank me for my time and the opportunity to add to their application package and blah, blah, blah. On top of that, I thought parents were supposed to be all over-involved in their children's lives (stereotypically speaking about those helicopter parents, of course). Did none of those parents (and one applicant was driven by a parent lest you think they met me without a parent's knowledge!) check in with their child after the interview to tell them to send a quick thank you?

The second 'issue' has to do with a sense of, I think, entitlement I often encounter in undergraduates. This is not meant to apply across all undergraduates, but my example illustrates what I mean. The grad student in my lab just got married, and we did not have an end-of-semester lab get-together in December as my boss likes to do. So she teamed up with the head of the grad student's wife's lab for a joint "happy wedding!" get-together. We have some new work study students in the lab, and the one who is a freshman was able to come. After we had all eaten and we were sitting around in various places chatting, said freshman came in holding a beer. He had his hand completely over the label at all times, as if that would prevent us from figuring out what he was drinking. Is drinking really SOOOO exciting that as a non-21-year-old-freshman you would grab a beer at a professor's house???? I think this exhibits a clear lack of respect for our hosts. For those of you into judging others, this kid also wears a baseball hat with a flat rim, which I personally find looks silly.