The Star Wars T-Shirt Quilt That Took Four Years to Make

 

This post was originally published on Crafting a Green World way back in 2016.

Back in 2012, I showed off my Star Wars T-shirt quilt top to you. I told you all about how I'd constructed it over the past six months from thrifted Star Wars T-shirts that it had taken me years to collect. I shared details of the log cabin style that I'd used to piece it, and the color scheme that I'd selected that would enable me to best utilize my stash fabric. I told you that for my husband's birthday, I planned to back the finished top simply with flannel, then quilt it. 

When I said "birthday," I meant "anniversary," and when I said "planned," I meant that I would do it four years later. 

Four entire years later, here is the finished quilt! 

This quilt top has sat in my WIP pile for four years. We moved in that time, and I took it with me. We got a bigger bed, and I put off finishing it, dreading having to enlarge the quilt from a queen to a king. Several birthdays and anniversaries and Christmases passed, and I always found something else to give my husband. And then the new Star Wars movie came out (and if you haven't seen it, it's WONDERFUL!), and suddenly, there was all this Star Wars fabric in the fabric stores! 

Want to know a sure-fire way to get someone to finish a years-old WIP? Tell them that they get to buy themselves some new fabric to do it! 

Although the rest of the quilt is sewn entirely from thrifted and stash fabrics, it turned out that some new fabric was just the inspiration that I needed to finish this project up. I toyed with the idea of using my new Star Wars prints in flannel and cotton to add a border around the quilt, thereby resizing it to fit our king-sized bed, but everything that I tried looked janky. Finally, I decided that I'd rather have a quilt that I like the look of, even if it's too narrow to fit our bed, than a quilt that fits well but gets on my nerves every time I see it, and I used that new fabric, along with some stash, to piece the quilt back.

Because I want to use the quilt in the summer, I didn't use any batting between the layers. I put the front and back right sides together, sewed almost all the way around, then turned it and edge stitched the entire perimeter.

The quilt isn't even technically a quilt, because instead of quilting it, I tied it at all four corners of every T-shirt piece.  

Four years, my Friends, and in the end, this Star Wars T-shirt quilt took one day to finish. I can't wait to see what I'm going to accomplish in another four years!

My Latest: Drawstring Backpacks, Slime and Sidewalk Paint, a Double-Sided T-Shirt Quilt, and Much, Much MORE!

It's been quite a while since I've updated you on my paid writing, and that's because I've had so much of it!

I substituted as site director for Crafting a Green World over the holidays (and yes, of COURSE Matt had to call me Director Finn), which means that for a while, I was writing five times a week, sometimes literally with a piece of pumpkin pie at my elbow. Fortunately, this was the best time to have the extra work, since Matt was on his vacation, as well, and with him playing with the kids, it wasn't too stressful to sneak off regularly and get these posts up:

a round-up of crafts and recipes related to coffee

a tutorial to make drawstring backpacks

You cannot have too many of these, by the way. They make organizing for extracurricular activities so much easier.

a Top Posts of 2014 round-up

a round-up of holiday upcycling options

a review of 150+ Screen-Free Activities for Kids (the kids made slime and sidewalk paint)

Giving the slime a haircut is always fun.

a round-up of chia seed crafts and recipes

a tutorial for making a double-sided T-shirt quilt

 a crafty recipe round-up

a round-up of altered container projects

a melted crayon ornament tutorial

 and, finally, an essay on the future of computer learning and the service industry

That was a lot of writing, right? Congratulations to me! 

Anyway, the other day, Will was pitching a fit about having to brainstorm topics for a personal narrative that I'll be requiring her to write next week. She didn't want to brainstorm topics; she WANTED to play half an hour of LEGO Marvel, but she wasn't allowed her last half-hour of screen time until after she'd finished her schoolwork. The only thing left on her work plans, however?

Brainstorm topics for a personal narrative.

After the huge temper blow-up, which thankfully took place in her father's company, not mine, she appeared in front of me, teary-eyed but belligerent, and I pulled her into my lap to quietly chill out for a while. After some chilling, she again expressed her desire to have her half-hour of screen time; I assured her that she had only one assignment left to complete before she could do that. She expressed her desire to NOT write a personal narrative; I assured her that she did not have to write a personal narrative today. Rather, she needed only to brainstorm a topic for a personal narrative to be written in the future. She asked why she had to write a personal narrative at all; I explained that much practice in composition is required before it comes easily, and that she will want it to come easily, so that she can focus on all that she wants to communicate one day. She said something along the lines of "how/why/what do you know about it, anyway?"

I looked at her in bewilderment, amusement battling with a bit of horror, and said, "Child, do you not know that your MOTHER is a writer?!? This is what I do all day when I'm not actively engaging with you. Writing is my JOB! Not even to mention--I used to TEACH writing, to COLLEGE STUDENTS! And you used to come with me sometimes! To my WRITING WORKSHOPS! Did you never wonder what was going on there, all the 18-year-olds in a classroom, me at the front of it talking to them, them asking me questions, me answering them? I was teaching them HOW TO WRITE!!!"

Once I had successfully made the child understand that I am a reliable authority in the field of composition and its instruction (mental note: must get my diplomas framed and hung to point out to them when they're acting belligerent about academics), the conversation resolved, the child finished her brainstorming, I praised it, and she actually promised me that she would not throw a fit at all next week about any part of the process of writing and editing a personal narrative.

I should have made her write that down and sign it, because I can guarantee you that she will throw a fit, likely at every single step of the writing and editing processes, but there was no time...

After all, the kid had a half-hour of LEGO Marvel to play!

These Dinosaurs are for Monetary Gain

We are FINALLY back in the groove of business as usual over here. Meaning, of course, LOTS of business and good things that happen. We got the morning pain meds and antibiotics and bandage change done, with only one tantrum (big improvement!!!), and hit up our Montessori garage sale (and bought toy ponies and stuffed kitties and a board game about musical instruments and a wooden map of Europe puzzle and several children's craft magazines and a felt book about animal habitats with loads of little felt animals to put in it and a remote control T-Rex and another kit to paint a plaster T-Rex that I've been eyeing in the stores but it's been too expensive but this one is pretty much BRAND-NEW, SCORE!) and went to the Bakehouse for breakfast for Matt and the littles and coffee for me, and got free cookies and coffee cake there on account of our food took half an hour to come, and I love you, Bakehouse, and thanks for the goodies, but I am NEVER going in on a Saturday morning again.

And then Matt went to work out and the kidlets got so involved in that I actually got the chance to sew, which I have not done for a while now, THANK you infected lymph node.

I made:

 

and:

and:

Ah, bliss! You'll likely notice that these dinosaurs are also T-shirt fronts stitched to quilter's cotton in a log cabin pattern (Courthouse Steps, to be precise). These, however, are to be sewn into a quilt for my pumpkinbear etsy shop, or perhaps my May craft fair, for the season is again nigh.

Then, of course, I had to suck it up and submit to an item that the girls requested be put on the calendar almost a week ago, and I put if off as long as possible, but I could reasonably put it off no longer...

We ate lunch at China Buffet. Barf.

However, after China Buffet (the girls' favorite food items there? Macaroni and cheese, and ice cream. See? Barf!), we came back home, and while the girls and I picked interesting violets and followed the paths of bees and stared at spiders and pestered slugs, my Matt fixed up the compost bin and then assembled my most favorite item of summer infrastructure:

See, what did I tell you?

Bliss.

WIP: The Dinosaur Log Cabin T-Shirt Quilt

That's an unfortunate mouthful. However, it is a T-shirt quilt--well, the center of each block is a T-shirt panel, with quilter's cotton prints pieced around it, so it's a kind of T-shirt quilt hybrid, perhaps:
And it is a log cabin pattern--Courthouse Steps, to be precise. It's not a perfectly traditional log cabin, because none of the pieces are necessarily the exact same width and I've not paid much attention to the values or the diagonal, etc. (you would not believe how difficult it was to figure out the simple math for this, although in our defense, when Matt and I were trying to work it out, we were enjoying a couple of nice glasses of sangria and we had two extra children running around the house--hence the sangria), but it is symmetrical:

And it is DEFINITELY dinosaurs. I can't even tell you how long I have been "working" on this quilt. I redid the pieces that I tried out originally, because they were awful, but I am super-proud of how everything is turning out this time. These hybrid blocks will likely be interspersed with log cabin blocks made solely of cotton prints, but I haven't gotten that far in my head yet.

I'm just going to roll with the momentum that I've got so far, and good luck that the whole damn thing doesn't get put away again for another year. Thank gawd the kid still loves dinosaurs!

A T-Shirt Quilt for Christmas

Some leftover bias tape that just happened to match the blanket back, a couple of hours machine-binding while watching episodes of Miami Ink on Netflix (If you got another tat, what would it be?), and one Christmas present is done and DONE:
I don't get to see my little cousins often enough (although thank gawd for Facebook), so it was quite fun to get this glimpse into the life and times of a 13-year-old girl. I love, for instance, how a teenager's passions can so easily range from air-brushed dolphins--
--to sexy werewolves:I'm totally on Team Jacob, too. Real men don't sparkle.

And, personalized T-shirts? Make wrapping Christmas presents WAY easier:
Next on Santa's list are superhero capes for three even littler cousins. And since that means getting out the Cricut, who knows what other wonders will emerge?

Outsourcing My Quilt Designs

I'm sewing a T-shirt quilt for my little cousin Katie this Christmas (this is no secret, or otherwise I imagine she'd have been asking her mom, "Where are all my T-shirts?"). After cutting out all the pieces for a one-block quilt from Katie's T-shirts, Willow found me on her bed yesterday, about to lay out a design for the quilt on top of her comforter. Will asked if she could lay out the quilt, instead, and never one to turn down an offer of unpaid labor, I agreed:
The final design certainly wasn't the kind of pattern I would have made it into, but it wasn't random, either, and although it's not something that I'd permit Willow to have free reign on in a quilt for a paying customer, she adores her big cousin Katie, and I was happy to give her the chance to add something permanent to Katie's world:
Sydney served as photo-documentarian for the event, catching Willow deep in concentration as she figures out some key detail in her layout:Catching me taking the pieces back up in the exact right order to ensure that I sew them correctly:And then catching us in post-layout celebration:
Now it just needs to be pieced, backed, bound, and wrapped.

Curious Little Monkey

My third class session isn't even until tonight, and already I've had the following cliched emails from students:

• the long, meandering story about how he missed class because he couldn't find it even though he "wandered around" Ballantine Hall for 25 minutes looking for it--oh, and there was no capitalization of his sentences--???


• the concise email consisting of four bullet-point questions asking about finicky little details in the five-point homework assignment due tonight


• the stupid question that asks about the exact same thing that I said three times in class on Monday--no, there's no forum open for tonight's homework assignment, because you're turning it in during class!

Normally, I'm actually pretty fond of my classes--teaching isn't necessarily my life's dream, but it has purpose, and I consider teaching some of my fellow humans effective written communication skills to be something of a mission of service. This semester, though, I've just started off really twitchy from the beginning. I dread having to get myself and the girls ready for the parent trade-off, I really miss my family during the three evening hours three times a week that I'm gone, and the late-night bike ride home leaves me still exhausted the next morning. I've also been feeling twitchy about Will's preschool lately, too--Bloomington Montessori is such a terrific school, and Willow absolutely adores it, but it's crazy-expensive, and I'm not sure how well a school institution, even a cool one like Montessori, fits with my parenting values. So, yeah, it is completely impossible this year for me to renege on my teaching contract and pull my girlie out of school, but my reactions at the start of this new school year are something to think about...

Know who else likes thinking about stuff? Curious George!

This is the first quilt I've posted on etsy in a while, since I've instead been making a few for the house, but eventually, of course, I ran into my perennial problem when I find that I really like making something--um, how many T-shirt quilted wall hangings do we need?

With these little guys, though, and unlike with the bigger quilts, I loooove quilting. Can you tell?

I don't normally do a lot of quilting to my full-size T-shirt quilts because they're already so busy that I think more pattern is distracting, but with these single-image quilts it's much easier to quilt a really creative, elaborate design that only enhances the primary image. Yay.

Oh, and yes, the Star Wars quilt is off of my etsy shop--it's happily wending its way over to its new home right now. And no, I don't know when I'll make another. I can only make a full-size quilt after I collect several T-shirts, and that depends on Goodwill and the dumpster diving.

Scooby Dooby Do, Where Are You?

I'm a real big 80s fangeek. Yesterday the girls found my container of dice from my Dungeons & Dragons days--it's up on the sci-fi bookshelf on account of I like to look at it--and so we all sat around for an hour and played dice: I'm really good at inventing games for preschoolers--in this game, we take turns choosing which die we want to roll, then we roll it, then Willow writes down what number we rolled. Probabilities, number recognition, fine motor skills, turn-taking--see, we're homeschooling! Needless to say, this is Willow's most favorite game, although she might have a change of heart when I show her the Horse Farm computer program I got her from the library today.

In other news of 80s nostalgia, witness my newest mini T-shirt quilt: When I was a kid, I loved Scooby Doo so much. It went off the air eventually, of course, and didn't jump back into syndication for probably ten more years. I was grown up-ish, by then, but I sat right back down to watch this glory of my youth, and thus had the shock of my life: why, the animation was terrible! And that Shaggy--he sounded just like the guy who did New Year's Rockin' Eve! (shudder!) It still is practically the highlight of my teaching career, however, that a few years ago, when the site RatemyProf was really popular, some anonymous student commented that I was "like Velma from Scooby Doo, only funnier." It utterly took the sting out of another student's opinion that "She needs to stop wearing those red boots!"

Anyway...I've become very fond of using a layer of fleece as batting instead of that weirdo polyester junk or the expensive and flat cotton batting, and I looooove how it makes my quilts all warm and thick and squooshy soft, so Iwent a little quilting crazy:

Eh. If you can't go quilting crazy, then how, I ask, can you go crazy?

Nightmare before Christmas before Labor Day

My partner and the kiddos are off having lunch at China Buffet right now--it's a place into which I will not step, but I did ask them to steal me home an eggroll, so do with that what you will. We've cleaned out the car, and put laundry on the line, and built some rickety shelves in the playroom (because that's just exactly where you want your shelves to be rickety), and I've done a rough draft of this semester's syllabus, updating all the grammar assignments from my concise and readable Longman to the newly required Wadsworth (the university gets a cut from this one, I think), and the kids have painted, and we've all cleaned more than I, personally, feel like cleaning (our house doesn't look like this person's house or anything, but my parents' house kind of does), and I finally finished sewing (and resewing) my most awesomest Nightmare before Christmas mini T-shirt quilt:

I really, really, really, really love it. It's not one of the T-shirt quilts I'm going to keep, though, so it's currently living in my Pumpkin+Bear etsy shop for a while, until it goes off to live in its new forever-home.

I bought the rest of the bolt of this skulls netting on clearance at Joann's a few months ago, and although this is its debut, I basically plan to sew skulls netting every single place in which a person could possibly sew netting. Shower curtain liner? That's not too weird.

And the lovebirds, from that Nightmare before Christmas T-shirt I bought at the best-ever garage sale:

There's nothing more beautiful than the love of the undead--it's unending, you see.

You know, photographing for etsy is a real art--some product photos on that site look like museum gallery photos, and some, on the other hand, are blurry and gross. I think product photos are very important--they're the only way your web shoppers are going to know what your product looks like, and your artistic style. The best photographers make me not only want to buy their stuff, but also to basically be just like them and be as cool and awesome and tidy and bright as they make their stuff look.

When I photo for etsy or for my craft fair photo album, I make a few standard photos. I take basic front and back photos of my product in an attractive location that allows me to get a straight-on shot. This is desperately hard for quilts, so often I have to fudge there, but smaller stuff is easier. I take a couple of detail shots, to show off the quality of my sewing or soldering, and to give a clear idea of the condition and/or unique characteristics of my vintage or recycled materials. And I always try to include one shot that has personality, with my kids doing something cute with the product, or the product hanging out in a weird location, or even a quirky angle to the product--something that makes my product stand out and reflects my overall artistic style. You can take photos of whatever you want to show off, though. Some people take a photo of their packaging, if it's really cool. Some people include a photo of the whole product line, maybe to encourage customers to buy more than one.
You also want to crop nicely, because etsy photos, in particular, thumbnail as square. So, if you don't crop to a square, or at least don't center your product in your shot, your product might not actually appear in its own thumbnail. You also want to crop things like this--

--to, you know, take the pajama-clad legs wearing her husband's socks out of the frame. Or you might want to take a look at this photo--

--then go and get the lint brush out and then take another:

Nice, huh?

P.S. Interested in more of my geeky fanart? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page!