Refashioning: T-Shirts and Socks into a Quilt. . .Bonus: Hair Tie Elastics

Who would make old socks into a quilt???? Well, I'll explain myself in a second. Let me start with the T-Shirts.

If you read my last post, you would know that I made thirty of my old T-Shirts into a quilt. Well, I had a few more. . .And these ones had emblems on them that were too big to fit into my square pattern. You can see below that they would only work in elongated rectangles. This required a little more forethought as I needed to plan out how they would lie. See, unlike the squares, they weren't all the same length, so I had to configure them so that they would fit into an even shape on all sides.

Then, I sewed the majority of them into five strips. (And then I sewed the strips together, but I didn't take a picture of that step.) Like last post, I doubled each piece with not only the front of the shirt, but also the back. (You can see why if you go here.)

All right. Now here come the socks. See. . .I lived in South Korea for three years. In Asia, you can buy the cutest little ankle socks on the street for $1. Needless to say, I bought a bazillion. They were so cute, but I don't wear them anymore. Some of them I never wore. But they are so cute! I didn't want to just throw them away! So, I thought I would add them to the bottom of my second T-Shirt quilt. Yes, I washed them a few times before doing this!!! Don't worry!

First, I cut the toes off. . .(And the heels and ankle bands.)

Then, I turned each sock around and cut up the middle. Because these socks were much thicker than the T-Shirts, I left them at one layer.

Then, I matched up the folds and sewed them all into strips like this.

Then, I sewed the strips together.

Then, I added them to the bottom of the quilt top. (I did measure them all out precisely of course. I don't just do things willy-nilly!)

Okay, here's the part I didn't show, but just explained in the last post. I laid my jersey backing fabric down first (very important to use jersey and not woven), and then laid my batting down. I was running out of batting at this point, so you can see where I've pieced it together.

Then, I laid my quilt top down and trimmed my batting around the outside of the quilt top, but within the backing fabric. 

Then I folded the backing fabric over the batting and pinned it through the quilt top and through all the layers. 

I sewed the backing fabric in place around the perimeter of the blanket.

Then, I pinned down my columns at regular intervals and did the actual quilting step. (Again, read the other post to see what that means.)

Here is the finished quilt.

Okay, last thing...I saved the prettier ankle bands of the socks to use for hair ties! They make the best hair ties because they don't break your hair!

The End!

Refashioning: T-Shirts into a Quilt

Making T-Shirts into a quilt was really popular a few years ago. Everyone was making them and it was revolutionary. Well. . .I may be a day late and a dollar short, but I still had a bunch of T-Shirts that I wasn't wearing, yet didn't want to get rid of, so. . .whether it's in vogue or not, I still did this project! I did do it a tad differently than the norm, so read on to find out how.

I work for my church in the office. Sometimes, I have to make these booklets with plastic binding. Well, I accidentally messed up two of the bindings, so instead of throwing them away, I took them home, taped them together to make a square, and used them as my quilt pattern.

This is how I cut my shirts out: I laid the pattern on top of the emblem of each T-Shirt, and just cut around it--all the way through each shirt--through the front and back at once. This made two pieces per shirt.

I kept cutting until I had cut thirty shirts. I had sixty squares when I was done.

Instead of throwing away the back pieces of the shirts, I actually kept them with their corresponding fronts as I sewed all the pieces together. Why did I do this? Two reasons: (1) Not all shirts were the same stretchy-ness. Some of the shirts stretched a lot more than others. Keeping an extra layer with every piece sewn added some body and heft which gave the whole project more uniformity. In fact, I actually traded around the backing squares on some of the stretchiest T-Shirts. (2) the extra layer added an extra level of warmness. (It also made the finished blanket 25-30% heavier, so if you want a lighter-weight blanket, don't do this. However, if you skip this step, make sure all your T-Shirts have the same stretchy-ness.) You can see my layers in the picture below. I used a simple zig-zag stitch with a wideness of 3 and a closeness of 1.5. The reason I waited so long to do this project was because I was hoping to have had a serger by now. Oh well, I don't. Anyways, the zig-zag stitch worked just fine!

I sewed them in five columns of six squares. Then I sewed the six squares together. I didn't use pins because they were all the same size squares. However, I only sewed a few inches at a time and made sure that all my seams matched up as I went along. Slow and steady wins the race!

I chose this baby blue/green jersey for the backing, simply because that was the only jersey I had that was wide enough. If you do this, make sure you use a jersey backing cloth as well. It will look and feel really weird if you use a woven cloth, that doesn't stretch, behind T-Shirts that do stretch. If all you have is woven, then you will need to iron on some non-stretch interfacing behind each of your T-Shirt pieces before you sew them all together, or at least before you sew all the layers together.

 Skipping ahead. I laid my backing cloth down first, then put my batting down, then laid the quilt top down over that. I trimmed the batting and then folded the backing cloth over the batting and connected it to the top layer with pins--pinning through all the layers at once. You can't really see it in this picture, but if you zoom in, you can see all the pins around the outside.

Once I sewed all around the quilt (and mitered the corners), I pinned through all the layers at the intersections of each T-Shirt piece. You can see what I'm talking about below. See how the pin goes through the corners of the white, yellow, green, and orange shirts? I then rolled it all up, and with the roll starting in my lap, I started feeding all these intersections through my machine, back tacking at just the intersections. This is a very necessary step because it keeps your batting (and everything really) in place. Little known fact: This is actually the act of quilting--when you sew through all the layers of a blanket to add warmth to a blanket, and to keep all the layers in place. (Some people think that quilting is when you sew a bunch of pieces together, but that is actually called "piecing" to make a quilt top.)

The finished quilt. Now I can keep all my sentimental T-Shirts that I never wear without them cluttering my drawers!

The finished quilt on my couch.

The End!

Refashioning: Turning an Old Lady Shirt Backwards. . .Literally!

I frequent my Goodwill on the weekends because all tags of a predetermined color are only a dollar! Honestly, most of the clothes you see in this blog. . .and on my person. . .come from this rack. Anyways, I'm always on the lookout for my "Type 4" colors, and my green in particular because it's my favorite. When I find it, I usually just buy it--even if the item is gross--because I love this color, and I know I can turn it into something else. I hope. . .as always, that this post gives you some ideas!

Here is an old lady shirt I found the other day. 

It's that really weird crinkly, yet stretchy, polyester fabric. It's usually really horrid, but on this particular shirt, the color really shines--almost sparkles. I can't stop looking at it. These pictures don't do it justice. (My camera has a hard time with greens, unfortunately.) Just picture the boldest green you have ever seen, and. . .that's it!

The first step was to cut the shoulder pads out!

Then, I cut the collar off.

Then, the sleeves.

Next, I pinned and sewed up the button placket. 

This used to be the front, but I wanted the buttons in the back, so I pinned it to the back of my dress form and used the form as my pattern. (This is actually a technic of pattern making called "draping" because you drape and pin the fabric onto a form and then cut away everything that doesn't lie flat. I don't do it very often, but I probably should. It worked really well.)

I also draped the front (which used to be the back).

Next, I worked on the sleeves. For this, I did my usual cheating method of cutting around sleeves of a shirt I already knew fit me well.

I sewed up the sides of the sleeves.

Then, I pinned the two bodice pieces together and sewed them.

I added elastic to the tops of the shoulders as reinforcement. This fabric is super stretchy and I didn't want the shoulders to stretch out. I've noticed this method on factory-made shirts I own. Turn your garments inside out sometimes! You can learn a lot!

I pinned , then sewed, the sleeves to the bodice.

Then, I sewed some black stretchy fabric to the neckline, but. . .I guess I forgot to take a picture. (I get ahead of myself sometimes and forget that blog posts need pictures. . .Tons of my projects never even make it on here because I forget to take pictures. . .Oops.)

Okay, so. . .It kinda looks like Star Trek, but. . .I love Star Trek (especially Mr. Spock, may he rest in peace), so I'm okay with that!

I added a leather Peter Pan collar necklace that I made (example of a project I never photographed), and wore it with a jumper so I wouldn't look like a Starship Trooper.

The End!

Refashioning: Three "Meh" Shirts into Two, "Yes, I Will Actually Wear Those" Shirts

Here is a quickie I did in about 15 minutes a few weeks ago.

First of all, the three shirts in question. The one below used to be a big kid's mini dress. I was going to wear it as a tunic, but then realized that that was not going to work. I cut the bottom off as you can see in the picture. (The bottom inches I used to make a headband. . .All the parts of the buffalo, right?)

This second shirt actually became part of the other two shirts. It fits me in the shoulders, but it's too short in the torso. . .amazingly enough.

The third shirt is one that you might just not consider even buying (even if it was on the dollar rack at Goodwill) because it's SUPER REDNECK! But. . .I saw its potential to be a statement piece.

So, I cut the bottom hem off the black shirt.

I folded that black bottom hem over and made it into the bottom hem of the houndstooth shirt.

So that one's done. The next one took a little longer.

So for the redneck shirt, I cut around the eagles in sort of a "sweetheart" neckline sort of way. 

So, here you can kinda see my vision for this shirt/dress. Maybe I just gave away the punch line. Oops.

So the next order of bidness was to fold the black shirt in half and cut a scoopy sort of section through the whole thing. Just so's you know, this will be the back seam line.

The next thing I did was to lay the eagle shirt on top of the opened up black shirt and cut the same "sweetheart" shape out of the front of the black shirt. (Notice how the bottom of the back of the black shirt is still "scoopy.")

This is kinda hard to see, but I pinned the armpits of the eagle shirt (which is inside out in the picture). I sewed up from the sides to the armpits because the eagle shirt was bigger than the black shirt.

Also, hard to see. I'm pointing at the side seams I'd just created to show you what I did.

Okay, so remember how the eagle shirt still had "sweetheart" necklines on both the front and back? So, in the picture below, I laid the black shirt on top of the back of the eagle shirt and cut out a "scoopy" seam line for the back.

See?

Okay, so. . .Here you can kinda see where I will join the black shirt and the eagle shirt.

I pinned them both together and sewed them together.

Voila!

Notice how the seams are "sweetheart" in the front and "scoopy" in the back. Hopefully, seeing the finished project makes my confusing directions clearer.

The End!