Over the last few years, I have had to rotate craft production due to an ever-increasing case of arthritis in my hands.
Beware - all of you obsessive knitters who decide to start spinning and use the computer a lot at work. Take it from me, this is a bad combination that adds up to pain in the hands. Last summer, I made it worse playing tennis obsessively with my 12 year old son. After injuring my wrist, the doctor gave me the advise: "No housework, no knitting and play tennis with someone at your own level." Ha!
One solution which has seemed to satisfy my craving to craft was to move into different "craft modalities" and to do them in "MODERATION". What an original thought.
A project that I had been planning for ages, was to make a TShirt Quilt out of the treasured shirts that my boys had outgrown. With a little planning (for dimensions), shopping (for filler, backing and binding tape) and the help of my old sewing machine, I had a wonderful blankie for a happy boy!
Here is the initial construction going together. I cut out tshirt blocks that were 12"x12". There were 20 blocks in all. Using the foot long blocks and a 3/4" seam around made it easily with filler that was 42" wide.
I used a non-pilling fleece for backing. It is so soft and warm! With the 5 square row down, the quilt required 2 yards of fleece which was 60" wide. Quilt binding worked great around the edges. I only needed 2 packs of binding.
I think it turned out great! As soon as it was done, my kids were fighting on who had dibs. I had originally planned on making it for my youngest son, and had used what I thought were his old tshirts. However, my middle son pointed out that several of the shirts were actually his (my aging memory had associated all with the youngest probably because of his wearing them in the most recent past as hand-me-downs!)
So, I dedicated it to both of them.
And, keeping with the theme of "moderation" (NOT), I went out and purchased more filler and backing to start on the next quilt!
Labels: kids, quilting, sewing
