Photo by Rebecca Uhle
Holiday Craft-off Winner: Brandy Agerbeck
(continued from the Winter 2005 issue)
Issue #26
The 5-Shirt Quilt
By Venus Zine Staff
Published: December 19th, 2005 | 2:54pm
SUPPLIES
• 5 men's dress shirts (free if you have them, $2 each from thrift store if you don’t)
• 2 yards polar fleece ($4.67 per yard, on sale)
• 1-2 spools of thread in matching colors ($2 per spool)
TOOLS
• cutting mat
• rotary cutter
• plastic quilting ruler
• sewing machine
• scissors
TOTAL COST: about $20
SKILL LEVEL: Ready for a Challenge?
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Recycle shirts you already have or go thrifting to find five large shirts. I chose 100% cotton, large men's blue- and white-striped shirts in five different patterns. Stay away from knit shirts, any lycra or stretchiness, and women's shirts with darts. I chose stripes, but you can really use any patterns or solids. Just stick with roughly the same size shirt and roughly the same weight of fabric (i.e., don't mix thick flannels with thin cottons).
2. Cut apart the shirts. First cut off the sleeves just below the seam. Cut off the cuffs and save those for later. Cut the sleeve down the seam. Cut off the collar. Button up the shirt and cut down one of the sides. This will give you two cuffs, two sleeves, and one big wide piece from the body from each shirt.
3. Sew closed all pockets, button fronts, and the gaps just below the cuffs. Iron all the pieces flat. Set aside the cuffs.
4. On a cutting mat, use the quilting ruler and rotary cutter to cut the sleeves and bodies into 6-inch squares. Watch out for buttons! If a button is close to a cutting line, snip it off. Hitting a button with the rotary cutter could cause you to slip and hurt yourself. (If you don't have a cutting mat, quilting ruler and rotary cutter, you can mark your lines and cut them with scissors, but the quilting tools will save you loads of time and effort.) Arrange the fabric to get the most squares out of every piece. Save the scraps.
5. Grab the 10 cuffs you set aside. Cut each in half. This will give you 20 cuff-halves of five different stripes. Distribute each of the four Stripe A cuffs to one of each Stripe B, C, D and plain stripe squares. Sew each cuff half to a plain square. Trim extra cuff away. You should have 20 squares with cuffs, each a different combination of fabrics.
6. Sort each type of stripe into three piles: squares with cuffs, squares with stitching or buttons, and squares that are plain.
7. Pair up the squares following two primary rules: Never pair two of the same stripe together. And always lay the pairs with the bottom stripe running horizontally and the top stripe turned 90 degrees vertically, right sides together. Laying this out consistently now helps to make a checkerboard or basket weave pattern later. If you didn't go for striped shirts, your pairing job will be much easier! I laid all my pairs out on an ironing board set up near my sewing machine, so I could grab the next pair easily. Sew all the pairs. I used just over a 1/4-inch seam allowance. You can use 1/4-inch to 1/2-inch seam allowance, just be consistent the whole time. Iron each pair of squares flat.
8. Now you will sew the pairs of fabrics into four-square blocks. Arrange the pairs so that four different stripes are in each block. I composed each four-square block with a pair that had a cuff and a pair that had stitching, with two plain squares in opposite corners. That makes it easier to arrange later and have your detailed squares distributed across the quilt top, not all bunched up in one area.
9. Now comes the fun of arranging those four square blocks. My quilt was six blocks wide and 4 1/2 deep (I cut the few extra blocks in half). That means my quilt is 12 squares long and 9 squares deep. Lay out the blocks on the floor so you can see the whole thing at once and can rearrange them. Sew together the squares.
10. At this point, I compared the finished top with the size of the polar fleece backing. I still had room on the long sides to reach the edges of the polar fleece, which usually is 58 to 60 inches wide on the bolt. I took my scraps and cut them all 6 inches wide. I cut them to various widths less than 6 inches long. I sorted them out and then sewed them together into one long strip of various stripes. I made sure that each stripe wasn't matching its neighbor. I ironed that flat and cut it into two pieces, sewing this along the long sides. This made my quilt top just a hair larger than 54 inches x 70 inches.
11. Next, back the quilt with polar fleece. This method is cheap, fast, and easy because you don't need batting or binding. The tradeoff is that the polar fleece is a knit so you have to baste it (hold it together) with lots and lots of pins to make sure it doesn't pucker when you're sewing it.
Lay the fleece on the floor. Lay the top, face down, on top of it. Make sure the two are lined up and smooth. Pin the two pieces together, paying extra attention to the edges. Sew the top to the fleece backing, as if you were making a pillow (i.e., sew it all around, leaving yourself a hole to turn the whole thing right side out). Trim away the extra fleece around the edges.
12. Turn the quilt right side out. Lay it flat on the floor, smooth it out, and use a zillion safety pins to baste it together.
13. Finish the edges with topstitching and quilt the top to the fleece backing. I chose to "stitch in the ditch," quilting it along the seams of the squares. When you're done, take out the safety pins and trim all the extra threads. Throw the quilt in the washer and dryer. When you open the dryer, act like you're opening a gift. Behold your new quilt!
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