A Blue T-Shirt Baby Quilt

Here's a just-finished baby quilt ... made from super-soft T-Shirts, and backed with cozy fleece.

Since a friend of mine recently had her fourth child -- and first boy -- I wanted the quilt to be extra boy-ish. So, I went with all-blue, and I wanted even the quilting to be distinctively "boy". 

Free-motion quilting footballs, baseballs, & basketballs all over seemed like the thing to do.

It's sort of a new take on the quilting I did on my older son's NFL Quilt, and the quilting I did on my younger son's T-Shirt Sports Quilt. 

Even though the quilt doesn't technically have borders, I quilted the outside row of squares with wiggly lines, to give a little bit of an "edge" to the quilt.

Even on the fleece, the quilting shows up well on the back of the quilt, which is neat.

I'm told that baby quilts made of T-Shirts are among the softest ones out there, and I'm hoping this one will be used and enjoyed.

I'm always glad when I 'm able to give something tangible to congratulate a friend and welcome a new baby.

Today's a great day to blog a finished quilt, because Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts has a Finish It Up Friday weekly link on her blog. I'll be linking this post there when her link-party is ready.

T-Shirt Sports Quilt - Reverse Applique & Quilt-As-You-Go

Recently, I finished this quilt for my youngest son ...

It's made of T-Shirt fabric - because T-Shirt Quilts are so fun ... and I've had fun trying my hand at Fancy T-Shirt-Quilt ideas, and Baby-Quilt T-Shirt Quilt ideas ... I decided to try my hand at the Sports-Quilt/Guy-Quilt variety of T-Shirt Quilt.

I was able to make great use of some of the T-Shirt scraps I had leftover from making T-Shirt Yarn ... and I had lots of fun trying Reverse Applique for the first time.

I also decided to use Quilt-As-You-Go techniques (modified a little), so I could work with just a small square at a time when I did the reverse-applique and the quilting.

All the fabric was cut from actual T-Shirts, except the green "sashing" strips, which were cut from a cotton jersey bed sheet.

The footballs and basketballs are my favorites ... I also included tennis balls and baseballs. And some beach balls and bouncy-balls. I sort of modified the football-quilting idea I used for my older son's NFL Quilt.

I might do a quick photo-tutorial sometime on how the reverse-applique-then-quilting went with the T-Shirt fabric. I love the fact that the T-Shirt fabrics won't fray, which helps a lot with this technique.

The picture below shows the back of the quilt -- also T-Shirt fabrics, so the quilt is super-cozy.

The whole quilt is fifty-something inches by sixty-something, so it's a nice throw-size/couch-size/kid-size quilt.

My little guy loves it, and so do I.

One of the fun things about this quilt is that I did most of the sewing on my new-to-me (Vintage, but nearly new!) Kenmore sewing machine that I got a few weeks ago for $10.00. It's an oldie but a goodie ... in really great shape, and barely (if ever) used. I love the durability and consistency of an older machine, and it's great for free-motion quilting!

I'm really pleased with how this quilt turned out.

Since this is a finish (YAY!) I'm linking this post to this week's Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts - It's one of my all-time-favorite quilting blogs, and the weekly links for finishes are always fun and inspirational!

The Latest Guy Quilt: NFL, Quilted with Footballs

This was fun:

Since my oldest son had a birthday recently, and since I hadn't made him a quilt in years, I needed to make a guy quilt.

When I had the idea to do something with NFL fabrics, I decided to check eBay for a deal on some team fabrics. I wasn't sure what I would find, but I figured the selection online would be pretty varied. 

Almost right away, I found a set of NFL fabrics on eBay -- precut 4" squares, two from each of the 32 NFL football teams. Perfect. Easy. (A little overpriced, maybe, but where else would I find all 32 fabrics in one place!?)

Pretty quickly, I decided what to do with 64 squares (+1 extra solid square) -- A basic Single Irish Chain layout. 

Simple. No frills. Guy quilt.

I added a border row above and below, made with shirt-cottons (solids, stripes, plaids) to add some length to make a nice-sized throw quilt. (It's about 55" x 68".)

The fabric combo turned out nice (brown cotton sheet fabric for the top, and something fuzzy-textured-warm for the backing). My favorite thing is how the quilting turned out.

Free-motion meander with FOOTBALLS quilted in! This was so fun, and surprisingly, not too complicated.

Maybe I'll take some more pics and do a picture tutorial on the FMQ footballs sometime. (I was surprised at how little I found online about how to quilt football designs into a quilt! I found a couple of ways that it works.)

Anyway. This was fun. And my son loves it. I'm happy about that.

Another Carolina Panther

While I was making the Carolina Panthers jeans quilt, my oldest son asked me if I could sew a smaller Panthers logo for him ... He just wanted it stitched onto a fleece blanket.

So, ever since then, I've been meaning to get to it.

This past weekend, I took a bit of time, a bit of Heat 'n Bond, a bit of white fabric, teal fabric, and black velvet ... and sewed up a Panthers logo.

The Panther is just about 10 inches high, zig-zagged along the raw edges, so it was relatively quick.
  

So, the new Carolina Panthers logo on a fleece blanket joins my first-ever jeans quilt on my oldest son's bed ... I'm hoping that the "raggedy" look works well with the plush, fuzzy fleece ...

Linking this post to this week's Little Quilt Monday at Pieceful Life

Finished Carolina Panthers Quilt

It's done! The Black-Jeans quilt with my rendition of a Carolina Panthers logo (I mentioned my inspiration in my post a couple months ago) is all finished!

I realize that the above picture looks a lot like the picture from my post a month ago, when the quilt was not done, but there are a lot of differences ...

Some quilting ... 

Diagonally through most of the squares ... except in those spots where pockets and labels made that impractical. 

Since the backing is awesome, sturdy velvety-plush-fleece, and since there's no batting, the quilt didn't need much quilting, just enough to hold it together.

I love the backing! Super-soft and fuzzy.

The edging turned out pretty cool. I decided to go for simple, and just turn the already-finished edge of the fleece to the front and zig-zag.

The corners aren't perfect, but I'm OK with that.

 

As usual, I love all the fun jeans-y details in the quilt ...

Oh, and since it's enormous (80" x 80", I think, but I forgot to measure), this quilt weighs a ton. I think we're going to especially enjoy this when colder weather comes ... which will be just in time for football season ... 

Really happy with the way this one turned out.