Sunday, June 9, 2013

Just Quilt It

If you are anything like me, your kids have t-shirts from EVERYTHING they've been in!  School activities, events and activities they've participated in, etc.  And sometimes you want to hang on to those t-shirts, even if they are too small or start to wear out.  The best way I've come up with to save those shirts, without having them clutter up the closest is make a t-shirt quilt out of them.

First you need to gather up your shirts and figure out how many you have.  For my quilt, most of our shirts had stuff front and back so I got two squares out of each shirt and ended up with 15 squares, or 8 shirts, in my quilt.  It didn't end up being a regular sized blanket, but it is perfect for the kid that is using it.  

The other things you are going to need are batting (I bought twin size at Joann's and didn't use all of it for my quilt), a backing material (I used flannel, 42 inches wide, which was wide enough to cover all my squares without additional sewing and I way over bought on yardage.  2 yards is plenty), binding material (3/4-1 yard of a woven material should be sufficient), and most importantly, interfacing, this is what makes the whole project possible (I used a lightweight fusible interfacing and I got 6 yards of it, which was more than enough) as well as your thread.  

General sewing materials, like a mat large enough to lay the whole shirt on, a rotary cutter and guide to make sure your lines are straight will make the project much simpler, as well.

mat and cutter photo matandcutter.jpg

For me, I was far too cheap to buy the standard suggested acrylic ruler, so I used a 12x12 floor tile left over from a previous bathroom remodel.  Because it was too thick to cut over, it made my squares just a little bigger than the recommended 12.5x12.5, which was totally fine.  

floor tile photo Floortile.jpg

If your shirt is blank on the back, you don't have to cut it apart at all before you cut out your square.  You just lay it out, lay your guide centered over your design and cut away.  Most of mine had things on the back I wanted to keep so I had to cut it in half.

cut apart shirt photo cutapartshirt.jpg

Basically, I just cut up the side, up the arm, up the shoulder and across the neck and down the other shoulder, so it opened up completely.  

 photo walksquare.jpg

Your squares should all be exactly the same size and shape and you will use the same guide to cut your interfacing as well.  Interfacing is thin and I folded mine into several layers and cut out a bunch at once, because cutting gets tedious, after awhile.  

Once all of your squares are cut out, you will need to iron on your interfacing.  Interfacing has a smooth side and a bumpy side.  The bumpy side goes against the wrong side of the fabric and you iron the smooth side of until it sticks to the back of the t-shirt squares.  

interface photo interface.jpg

Next, you'll need some space to lay out all of your squares.  I did a 3x5 arrangement, because 3 squares wide perfectly fits that flannel I knew I was using.  Play with the arrangement until you are happy with how it looks.  

Squares photo squareslaidout.jpg

The most important part of this process is make sure you have a dedicated "helper" joining you in your project.  How would I ever get anything done without her?

 photo helper.jpg

Once you are happy with the layout, you'll fold the left hand square onto the middle square and pin the sides securely, right sides together.  Sew the joining seam with a straight stitch.  Then lay it back on the floor and pin the right to the middle and repeat.  Do the same thing for all the rows, then repeat with the columns that you created from sewing the rows together.  After you have all the squares joined, iron your seams open so they lay flat inside your blanket.  

Next you are going to create a blanket "sandwich" with all of your layers.  Start by laying your backing fabric right side down, followed by your batting and your quilt top, right side up.  Pin the edges securely and sew a straight stitch around the outside edge of the quilt.  I sewed very close to the edge and then cut next to that line, to make all the layers exactly even.

sandwich photo sandwich.jpg

Next, you'll want to sew around each square to hold the materials in place and make it more decorative.  My machine is very basic and only has about 10 stitches, so I just used the coolest one I had, even though none of them are particularly decorative, like they would be on a quilting machine.  This is the part that took the longest and was the most tedious.  It required a lot of maneuvering, with trying to shove large portions of the blanket through my machine.  I also noticed the material wasn't pulling well because it was so thick, so I had to make sure I pushing it through carefully.  

Finally, you need to bind it all off, so your not so pretty raw edges don't show.  Start by cutting your binding material into 3 inch wide strips.  

3 in binding photo bindingstrip3in.jpg

Then you'll fold those strips in half and finger press a crease in the material.  

binding half photo bindingstriphalf.jpg

Reopen the strip and fold the sides into the middle crease.  Pin the sides and sew the edges down 

binding quarter photo bindingstripfoldedinhalf.jpg

bindings to sew photo bindingstrip.jpg

After that, you need to seam two binding strips together (which for my 5 rows was a little long, but I just cut off the extra.  If you do more rows, you might need more binding strips).

 photo longsideseam.jpg

For the short side, one binding strip was just almost long enough, so I just used a small piece that I cut off the long side and seamed that together as well.

Once you have your binding strips long enough, start at the corner and fold the strip over your not so pretty edges and pin the whole length.  Once you've got a whole side pinned, sew the binding strip to the quilt.  I used a 3/8 seam allowance to make sure I got all the pieces and the seam wasn't too close to the edges.  Repeat this around the quilt until you've completed all four sides.

binding corner photo pinnedbinding.jpg

Stand back and admire your lovely quilt! 

done photo done.jpg


Here, I flipped over the corner, so you could see the backing material as well.

Done flipped corner photo doneflippedcorner.jpg


Saturday, March 23, 2013

Pahk the cah in the yahd

When we bought our house, we knew it was a little small but it had an attached garage.  In the "grand plan" we had planned to remodel it, take out the door, raise the floor, add ventilation, etc, etc, etc and turn it into a family room.  In the mean time, we put carpet out there and a couch and TV and all the kids' toys and video games.  Then we decided it is just a garage and we weren't going to work that hard on it.  For heat, we've been using a small electric heater, disguised as a fire place.  It never gets very warm but it was always ok.  For the last few months, the kids just haven't been using the space, electing to play in their rooms most of the time instead.  I don't know if it is because of the litter box that it out there or the cold or that they just prefer the stuff in their rooms but it has basically become a junk room, full of toys no one plays with and electronics no one uses.  RF started talking about how he wanted to change it and talk about it and talk about it.  Finally, he called his dad and they decided since he was off on spring break, they'd knock it out and get it finished.

They started Saturday the 16th by ripping out the nasty old wall board and building a new wall.  I didn't get an actual before picture because I was running errands with MF when they started out.

Here is the new wall they built

new wall photo newwall.jpg

On the back side of the wall, they built storage shelves to move all the toys and stuff out of the rest of the room to make it less cluttered looking.

shelves photo shelves.jpg

MF decided she didn't like how long it was taking and felt compelled to write a motivational message to the crew.

message photo motivationalmessage.jpg

Too bad it was written in redneck :) (It says Git it dun)

Once they got the wall board down (which you can see behind the shelves, since they recycled it to back that up), they found that insulation was a nasty mess.  Shredded, moldy, full of mouse droppings, etc.

old insulation photo oldinsulation.jpg

Set back number one was  changing that for better stuff that would actually work and let us heat that space in a reasonable amount of time.

new insulation photo newinsulation.jpg

Set back number two happened when we started hanging the drywall and figured out the room wasn't quite square.

corner photo corner.jpg

For reference, this piece is touching top and bottom, with that much gap in the middle!

Set back number three happened when I started to mud the existing drywall (The West wall had always had drywall on it, but it was unfinished and unpainted) and found several large holes and rips in the drywall that were going to be a beast to patch.  We had some leftover drywall, so we decided to almost completely replace that wall as well.

mudded wall photo muddedwall.jpg

While the guys were working on the drywall, I set to work cleaning the garage door.  I scrubbed it with the Mr. Clean and I don't know if you can tell from the picture but this is one side cleaned and one side left!  We did find out that we can probably paint the panels, so that is the plan for when it warms up a bit.

clean door photo Cleandoor.jpg

We also decided to mud the ceiling joints, but basically, it is particle board that we painted so it is pretty textured.

mudded ceiling photo muddedceiling.jpg

Then we painted the ceiling.  That sucked.  I did the whole thing, all the cutting in, all the painting etc.  It took about 3 1/2 hours and I felt like I'd been beaten when I was done.  But it was 100% worth it in the dramatic change it made in the room.

painted ceiling photo Paintedceiling.jpg

WF got home from his jet setting vacation while we were working, so I decided now was the time for him to learn how to mud.

c mud photo Cmudding.jpg

Once the millions coats of mud was dry, we sponged the edges (sooo much easier than sanding and so much less messy) and started painting.  My paint crew decided tie dye was the uniform of the painters.

paint crew photo paintcrew.jpg

WF even helped paint.  After begging to help for hours, he worked for about 20 minutes before he said he was done.

c paint photo Cpainting.jpg

We trimmed the ceiling and the new door and still need to trim the window and the floor but other than that, we are basically done.  At some point, we need to do something to the floor but concrete epoxy paint is super expensive and that just isn't something we are going to do right now.

The room now gets super warm.  We were running two heaters trying to get the paint dry and I asked RF to turn them off because I was roasting.  About an hour later, I looked over and there was condensation RUNNING down the window because it was so warm in there!  All the toys are out of it and in the storage room.  All the shovels and brooms and mops are hanging in the storage room and most importantly, the cat's litter box is in the storage room.

This is the after of the door to the house and garage door.

after front photo AfterTV.jpg

This is the after of the new wall and door.

after back photo Afterdoor.jpg

Of course, this all means that I will never end up parking my car in the garage, even after the kids are gone.  It's way too nice to put a car in now!  It is, however, perfectly nice for a gathering.  Who is ready to have a welcome spring party, once we survive snow-pocalypse tomorrow?