Lisa's UFO Challenge: October 2016 (Post & Update)

I definitely fell behind in posting anything about my October project for the #APQResolution UFO Challenge. The selected project for October was #8, which is a beer t-shirt quilt. Since I have been quilting the past 4-5 years, I have made a lot of quilts for other people, but I have not yet made one for my husband (and he really deserves to have one!).  

I have a rule for Rob - for every new t-shirt he brings in the house, he needs to get rid of another one, because his t-shirt drawer is overflowing & I can't stand fighting with it when I put the laundry away. I convinced him to really reduce the shirts he has by telling him I would make a quilt out of any of the beer t-shirts he was willing to part with. This was a few years ago. I have laundered & 'rough cut' the shirts.  I also purchased  2 coordinating beer themed fabrics a few years ago with the intent of using in this quilt. All of that has been sitting in a bag in the closet for quite some time (I think that bag even spent a year sitting in Mary's sewing room as I was going to work on it at her house so Rob would not see the progress).

I knew October was going to be very busy in all other aspects of life, so was not sure how far I would get with this project. It definitely isn't finished, and is still barely started. But, I did spend a lot of time canoodling. One mental block I have had in starting this quilt has been in thinking about how to make the quilt so it is not just 12 inch blocks of t-shirt with sashing. I have a lot of shirts with varying sizes of logo & image I want to use, so want it to be a little more interesting than the typical t-shirt quilts I have seen.

At the end of October...I didn't sew a single thing. But I did sign up and watch a class I had been eyeing for a long time on Craftsy... "The Ultimate T-Shirt Quilt". This is exactly what I was looking for in the approach for Rob's quilt, as it adds some interesting elements for dealing with different size logos/images from the shirts. I purchased all of fusible I need to back the t-shirts with. I've also determined that that beer themed fabrics I originally purchased may not be what I want to use given the t-shirts I have (a sampling in the picture above). If I don't use this fabric in the front, it will become the backing.