I Did the Thing.
You know how people save their old t-shirts in a dented banker’s box at the back of the closet, and say that they’re going to turn them into a quilt someday?
That’s the thing I finally did.
27 Gallons.
For more than a decade, I co-owned a comic book store in Chicago. I can’t tell you exactly how many t-shirts that translates to, but when I moved back to Oregon, my personal collection filled a 27-gallon Rubbermaid container. Probably fourteen of those gallons could be evenly divided between Godzilla and Doctor Who. And the rest? So many super heroes. And horror movies. And other nerdy stuff that I reveled in… and still do.
But that store opened twenty years ago, and some of those shirts have seen better days even though the pictures on them are amazing, and the memories are precious. Not all of them survived my hedonistic lifestyle, but whenever I had the presence of mind, I saved those shirts in the back of the closet before they got completely ruined. Just like you did. And I said that eventually, I would preserve those memories by turning them into a t-shirt quilt.
I guess the main thing that stopped me was the simple fact that I’ve never made a quilt, or anything like a quilt. It seemed like such a specialized set of skills and knowledge, that getting started was really daunting. Most of the time when I’m faced with a project that is outside of my experience, I just shrug and dive in, but in this case I went ahead and watched some YouTube videos just get an idea of what I was in for. And to make a list of tools I would need!
The most important additions to my repertoire were an oversized cutting mat, a rotary cutter, and a whole bunch of iron-on fusible interfacing - but once I had that stuff, I really did just dive right in.
Actual Unique Designs.
There are places where you can send in your old t-shirts, and they will turn them into a quilt for you. Did you know that? I was curious, so I looked at a few of them, and they were terrible. Like, just awful, joyless blankets made with neither love nor understanding. They just chop them up into identical quadrilaterals. Maybe I didn’t intend to change every one of my shirts into a new work of art, but I definitely wanted each square to be different. I wanted the shirts to be transformed.
I only get one chance with each shirt, but I also wasn’t planning to make really complicated constructions. With a little bit of trust in myself, and little bit of what-the-hell, I started making squares and got better at it as I went along.
I was able to incorporate more than 50 shirts into these squares. Some of the other remnants include parts of three different Halloween costumes! For the borders, I used old jeans, and an olive green canvas. The bag that I carry when I’m walking my dog is made out of that canvas! There are also t-shirts that I designed myself, and shirts that I won from contests on Instructables (which will always remind me of my brother.) And jeans that are stained with the evidence of other art projects. Basically, it’s pretty dang special.
I have the sewing machine that they had in stock at Bi-Mart during quarantine. It’s fine, but it’s not up to the task of machine-quilting a beast of this size. My t-shirt quilt is more than nine feet long! So I considered taking the completed blanket down to a local quilting place and having it done there, because it would look more ‘finished’. But then, I wouldn’t have done all the work myself, and in the end, that’s what I wanted most.
Hand-tying was good enough for my favorite quilt at my grandma’s house, so it should be good enough for mine!
The Doctor.
Yes, as you can plainly see, one of those squares is a picture of a dog. That’s a picture of my dog, The Doctor. A portrait of the Doctor, made out of a Doctor Who shirt!
So Extra.
The quilt has forty-eight squares, but I actually made fifty-two. I wanted a little extra so that I had more wiggle room when I did the layout. And because I had a lot of shirts. And because not every square was going to be the best, so maybe I didn’t want to be locked into all of them! Anyway, at the end of the day, I had four extra squares.
So after a few weeks of enjoying the quilt (which we love) I decided to utilize the leftovers. I made a pair of matching pillowcases. They are quilted and hand-tied, just like the big one!
The cases are not quite as tidy looking as the quilt, but they were made from the very last of the fabric - those little pops of green you see are literally all that was left of the canvas! There is not a single pair of old jeans left in this house. We’re all quilt people, now.
And So Can You!
Everybody get out your old t-shirts! Stop waiting. It’s not as hard as you think.
My quilt is not going to win any awards. To the extent that I designed the squares at all, I designed them to look square when it was all assembled, even if they were imprecise. I pieced them together with minimal measurement, then cut them down! I was all about keeping things manageable. And the finished product is so much more personal and interesting, than just cutting a twelve-inch square out of each shirt. I’m super proud of it!
Making the quilt took about thirty days, but it preserves so many years of memories. The comic shop was a huge part of my life, and those years were enormously important in other ways too. This quilt also holds keepsakes from the years since, including a square for my partner incorporating a shirt he acquired more than thirty-five years ago. I’m so glad that I finally made this thing. It’s awesome. And it weighs as much as two hundred suns.