Swimming T-shirt Quilt

I have been making quilted items for about two years now and I finally finished my mother's t-shirt quilt (I've been working on it for the past 9 months).  She's been coaching swimming for the past 14 years and has collected a number of shirts - some with my name on it, some with my brothers.  I asked her for all the shirts she no longer wears and supplemented them with a couple of my own that weren't wearable (but I couldn't part with).

Looking through the various t-shirt quilt tutorials, I didn't find one that I liked too much.  I ended up taking 30 shirts and finding the biggest one of the bunch (which ever had the largest section I wished to used and added 1.5" for stitching together purposes).  Once I found that one, I measured it and used it for the template for each "block" or shirt.  Then I cut out corresponding strips of black fishy print and cubes of blue fishy print for border.

This is how I attached each strip to then make a row.  I wouldn't do it this way if I do another t-shirt quilt.  It was hard for me to match up the blue blocks to each shirt's corner effectively.

See how large it is? There's a panel hanging over each side of our pool table.  You can kind of see how some don't line up properly.

The hardest part was lining up the blocks and strips, which was my fault. If I had stitched the block and strip to the shirt and made each block that way instead of stitching rows of shirts together and sewing the lines of blocks/strips to it then it would have come out neater throughout.  But Mom claims she doesn't notice (but I do).

On the back, I did a very poor job of appliqueing the shark to the two large strips of blue/black fabric (the store ran out of both and that was the best I could do.  Stupid budget/not being able to find it anywhere).  It looks like a shark (the mascot for her summer team) but I don't like how it came out. I need to work more on my cutting skills.

You can see the two different fabrics clearly here.

It's a crappy, crappy shark. Ugh.

The binding was ok because I had an excess of the back fabric and simply folded it over (I've seen it used in several quilts as a "cheat" for an easy way of binding one).

At the top of the quilt, I hand stitched, "Just Keep Swimming" which turned out OK.  I used a hoop to keep the fabric taunt, but I really need to practice my hand quilting.  I also added waves throughout the rest of the quilt.

Ehhh...

Marginally better...

Probably the best of the three words.

These were throughout the rest of it. Some where more mountains than waves, but that's OK. I tried... right?

My mom was thrilled.  Even though the quilt is big enough for a King and they sleep in a full, she loves it.  My dad was telling me about how she won't put it out yet because she doesn't want the animals to ruin it.  Sigh.  If only she knew how much time Domino and Bailey spent on it....

This is mine, right?