An Extra Large T-shirt Quilt

Fleece quilt backing

     I had a client that made a T-shirt quilt for her niece.  She had made some for her two sons and brought them to me to finish.  When she asked if I could do another, I said sure.  What I didn't realize was that the one was much larger.

Top of quilt on backing

     This one was too wide for a single piece of fleece.  I had to seam two long pieces of fleece to get a large enough piece for the backing.  I then laid this out on a bedroom/office floor, right side up.  I laid the quilt top face down on it and smoothed it all out.

Trimming off the excess backing

     I then used straight pins all around to keep it together and trimmed off the excess fabric. I made sure to place the pins parallel to the sewing/cutting line.  I usually place my pins perpendicular to the stitching line but in this case they would have interfered with the cutting.

Pinned, trimmed and ready to sew

     After I finished trimming the fabric, i sewed all around with a 1/2" seam allowance leaving an opening in the bottom.  I pressed my stitches and then turned right side out.  Pressed it again on the right side, cotton fabric, and then edge stitched 1/4" from the edge, closing up the opening as I sewed.

Ruler under the column

     Now for the fun part.  I once again laid the quilt on the floor.  Now I needed to use my quilting safety pins to hold the layers together so I could quilt the columns.  The first few attempts I kept catching the carpet or I missed the backing.  I needed a hard surface but I didn't want to move the quilt as it was too large to lay completely flat on my cutting table.  Ah, my 60" metal ruler to the rescue.  I slid in under the column I was working on and it provided the needed hard surface.  Pinning went very quickly after that.

Pinned and ready to be quilted

     Then it was time to wrestle it back to the machine.  I stitched in the ditch along the columns.  It was not easy because of the bulk.  After getting the columns finally done I decided that the rows really didn't need to be quilted.  There was no batting to worry about and the fleece backing was secured to the front all around the sides and up and down the length in multiple places.

     Another project done for a happy client.