The Scrappy Shirt Quilt: Finished!

Not long ago, I finished up the straight lines and swirly lines on the quilt. I like how the quilting looks from the front, but I think it shows up well on the back, too.

This past week, I put the binding on The Scrappy Shirt Quilt.

I started sewing on The Scrappy Shirt Quilt several months ago, making Nine-Patches and Snowball Corners with fabrics cut from cotton shirts. 

Actually, last fall, I had this idea for a shirt quilt, so I started on (and blogged about) a smaller quilt top a little bit like this one, as a sort of "test run. In January, I wrote a picture tutorial on the easy Snowball Corners I was making. 

I blogged in January and February about the Nine-Patches and Snowball-Corner blocks I'd made, and in April, I added a border, pieced a back, and started quilting. July saw the last of the quilting.

This past week, I was pleased to finally finish putting the binding on. 

Lots and lots of solid green binding.  

One of the things I love about this quilt is that all of the patchwork is made from recycled 100% cotton shirts. All the nine-patches and snowball blocks - even the yellow and white "background": all shirts! I'm fond of mentioning these fabrics as having come from my favorite fabric designers. 

The light blue border on the front of the quilt is shirt-weight fabric, and I think it's one of the fabrics my grandmother sent me many years ago. She loved sewing, too, so she would occasionally send me a box of fabric and lace, and she'd remind me of the story of when I was little and would ask her for pieces of lace and fabric so I could "make cute things".

It was fun to put the back of the quilt together. All the light-colored squares on the back are cut from shirts. The dark-blue-and-white floral wasn't a shirt (obviously), but as I mentioned in the April post, I decided to use this fabric "inside-out", because the fabric reminded me of how the waiters at my dad's restaurant always wore Hawaiian shirts that were sewn with the fabric "inside-out", so that the colors on the outside of the shirt were the lighter, more muted versions of the bold-colored fabric. Hawaiian shirts like that make me smile, remembering that as a kid, I found that style odd, but intriguing. 

The green binding fabric has no relation to shirts, but it was in the right place at the right time, and blends well with the colors and style of the quilt. 

This quilt is bigger than most of the ones I've made: it's 70" x 80". 

I'm linking this post to this week's Finish It Up Friday at CrazyMomQuilts, and looking forward to taking a look at some other quilt bloggers' recent finishes there.