Begin by ironing the shirt. This is necessary because this is a quilt
project, and the edges need to be straight, not because I’ve
taken leave of my senses. I don’t usually iron T-shirts. This task
will be made much easier if you use an ironing spray like DYLON
EASY IRON. It isn’t a starch, but it helps smooth out those wrinkles that have been buried in the closet since last September.
Line up the bottom edges of the shirt and give it a good shake.
Smooth it out on the ironing board. Give it a light spray with
DYLON EASY IRON and press. (Put a pressing cloth over the shirt
if the design has been ironed-on and not silk-screened. Most
T-shirts are silk-screened, so you should be okay).
Keep calm! There’s a way to preserve a special T-shirt.
When the shirt is more wrinkle-free than it has ever been before,
take it to the cutting mat. Line the ruler up to the sides, within
about three inches of either side of the design. Using a temporary pencil, mark these lines.
E
Following the marked guides, slice off the shirt’s sides and arms.
Then, measure and mark about two inches from the top and
bottom of the design. Cut along the marked lines to remove the
neck and the bottom of the shirt. The back of the shirt will make
a nice dust cloth or cleaning rag, if you like that sort of thing.
But sadly, they sometimes just don’t make the cut.Such was
the case for my son’s favorite Dr. Who T-shirt.
Place what’s left of the shirt onto the fusible interfacing, so that
the fusible side is attached to the back side of the shirt. Take it to
the ironing board and fuse the interfacing to the shirt, following
the manufacturer’s instructions. Be sure to press, not iron back
and forth. You don’t want the shirt material to stretch.
very July, it’s the same thing. We start gathering up the
things that we take to the cottage for vacation. These
essentials of life on the lake are tucked into the closets
during the long winter, emerging wrinkled and bedraggled,
hopeful of a summer of fun.
For those unfamiliar with Dr. Who, he is the title character in
a long-running British show about a time-travelling good
guy who takes mere mortals on fantastic adventures through
time and space. His spaceship is a vintage UK police call box
that has been retrofitted into the “Time And Relative Dimension in Space” device, affectionately known as the TARDIS.
Although the TARDIS is bigger on the inside than it is on
the outside, the same cannot be said of the T-shirt: it has
become too small. But, it’s still precious to my boy. I know,
because I found it sort of folded on the chair in my studio.
He asked me to preserve it for all time in some way. I decided
to make it into wall art, in the same way that more ambitious
quilting mothers make T-shirt quilts for their children.
Trim the interfaced design so that all the edges are straight. Use
a narrow zigzag stitch on your sewing machine to finish all the
edges. In the spirit of re-purposing, I tried out GUTERMANN’S
rPET RECYCLED thread. It worked wonderfully well. It’s made
from recycled plastic bottles, which is great, because this quilted wall art will be made from a recycled shirt and re-purposed
scraps.
Finish the edges with a zigzag stitch on the interfaced T-shirt design, as your
special shirt becomes wall art.
Let’s get started.
You will need:
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505 Temporary Fabric Adhesive
Dylon Easy Iron
HeatnBond Feather Lite iron-on adhesive
Truecut rotary cutter and its ruler
Gutermann’s rPET recycled thread
six-color marking pen
free motion quilting gloves
very lightweight interfacing
quilt batting
iron and ironing board
safety pins
fabric glue stick
utility scissors
straight glass head pins
inkjet printer fabric
artist’s stretched canvas
QUILTsocial
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