Last summer, my daughter requested that I make a quilt for the Sportsman's Club field day back home. I spent most of the summer trying to decide on a pattern and fabric. Then on the first weekend of August while on the HWY 127 Yd Sale somewhere in Tennessee, I came across a lady that was selling as many cowboy shirts as I could stuff in a garbage bag for 1 buck. At that moment I remembered the Seven Shirts + Seven Steps = One Thrifty Quilt blog post I'd found & printed about 4 years ago.
(Update 6/10/2020: Unfortunately the trail to this link is now a dead end?)
PERFECT! A quilt from Cowboy shirts made for a Sportsman's club that consisted mostly of Kentucky Cowboys!
14 shirts in all.
These are the 7 shirts I chose with 2 lights, 4 darks and a dominate red.
I did get the shirts cut up according to directions and started sewing strips together. It all came to a halt when I broke my arm in the middle of August at the state fair. A year later, this past July, I picked the project back up to finish the quilt for this year's field day.
The quilt consists of a combination of snowball blocks and 9 patch squares. Above, you see the 2½" squares being sewn onto a 6½" light square.
I used a water erasable fabric marker to draw a guiding line on the sewing machine case. Had to be careful not to stretch this fabric which was on the bias of the fabric.
Assembly lined to cut off corners.
When possible, I kept features of the shirts such as tags, buttons, & button holes.
The 6½" snowball & 9 patch squares were arranged to match corner fabrics which created the overall design.
The directions said to make up the corner squares using a design of your choice.
I decided to use the leftover corners cut off from the Snowball blocks.
The double border consisted of a strip of the dominant red used in the center of the 9 patch and a row called "Piano Keys."
Just some simple machine free motion quilting was done. Directions suggested to tie the quilt with the buttons from the shirt. All of my shirts except one used snaps, so I didn't have the button choice.
I tried to keep the shirt details whenever possible.
The backing was made from the leftover backs and sleeves.
Notice the hem of shirt was laid over another shirt,
and just top stitched to keep the character of the shirts.
The edge was turned over for a self binding edge.
Finished! A year later, and most importantly, a month early.
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Thanks to the FREE programs:
possibly used for this post
GIMP for cropping & other digital effects
