A Break to Show Some T-Shirts but First....

It's finished except for the corners and the borders.  I will have a 2 in green border, a 1 inch white border, 1/2 gold and then a blue border.  Decided to take a break as I want to get it all pressed and good iron is in a different room!  Soon.  I will do the quilting when I return to NC.

I have been cleaning out as I have mentioned and discovered quite a trove of tshirts so I decided to get some done both for my daughters and to sell at my quilt club garage sale.  These are just a few of them.  I am going to overdye a couple of them as I am not crazy about the colors.  Some I folded and some I just smushed like this one.  I used only fuchsia, sun yellow and navy blue over ice.  The navy blue was a 5% solution and the other two were a 10% solution.

Really liked this one!

I may throw this one into some yellow dye.

Another one I liked.

Random color!

I believe this was a light yellow tshirt that I just used the fuchsia and navy on.  

These are the first five of the blocks which will be part of a mystery quilt I am working on with the guild.  Also have parts of other blocks but have no idea what it will look like when finished or whether I will like it or not.  I am sticking with a purple, green and white palette. 


I have been spending some time each afternoon cutting various widths of strips from smaller pieces of fabrics which were mostly less than a yard ea.  I am doing them by color family and have done yellow, orange and most of red so far and probably have close to 30 lbs in 2 1/2 gallon bags.   

I have been searching the internet for easy blocks to do with jelly roll sized strips especially since this is what I have the most of (2 1/2 inches wide).

One technique an art club member mentioned was making half square triangles out of strips of fabric.  I have always disliked half square triangles because of the trimming but using this technique makes them turn out perfectly the same even though they have bias edges.  You sew two strips together on both sides (instead of just one), then use a 45 degree ruler and cut out triangles which unfolded turn into squares.   Using two 2 1/2 inch strips, the finished squares are 2 1/2 inch (3 inch unfinished).  

 The next thing I played with is a block called Hidden Wells which coincidentally was probably the basis of one of the very first quilts I did 40 years ago!  The technique for this one is related to the above one. I just randomly took four strips from my 2 1/2 inch x 22 inch bag.  I sewed them together to make an 8 1/2 inch wide strip, pressed the seams to one side and then cut out two 8 1/2 inch squares.  I then sewed those two squares together around all four sides, placing one with the stripes horizontally on top of one with the stripes going vertically.  After sewing all the way around the outside, I made two cuts diagonally on the finished square which results in four squares which I sewed together as shown here!.  It is certainly a lot easier technique than the one I used so many years ago and resulted in a really well matched block which was about 10 inches square.  I will probably use the same color family on the top and bottom of strips for a real quilt.  I think a quilt will come together really quickly and this technique really is easy.  I will have those bags of strips used up in no time!!