Adventures in a T-Shirt Quilt: Day 1

So I am doing a t-shirt quilt for my cousin's roommate. He brought by the t-shirts this morning. There were 22 t-shirts, 2 button ups, and 2 polos. I am doing a 5 x 5 quilt (this means, 5 rows, 5 columns, for those of you who don't speak "quilter"). He wants minkee on the back, and a solid navy blue for the sashing.

I went to Joann's Fabrics after work today, and bought 9 yards of lightweight Pellon fusible interfacing, 3 yards of a solid navy blue "Quilter's Solids" fabric, and a Full size (because that's all they had) polyfill batting about 1/4 inch loft. It was only $34. Not too shabby. This took about 1 hour, because the Orem Joann's is always busy and you always have to wait for at least 20 minutes to get your stuff cut.

I got home, ate dinner, and proceeded to cut apart the t-shirts. Up one side, across the sleeve, through the neck, across the other sleeve, and down the other side. It took about an hour. Since I am only using 25 blocks, I had to pick which shirts to use. The polos were a little thick, so they were immediately disqualified. Fortunately, one of the t-shirts had enough of a pattern on the back that I could use it as well as the front. I ended up using 22 t-shirts (with 1 back) and the 2 button ups.

After the shirts were cut apart, I proceeded to cut out large sized pieces of the interfacing, place them on the t-shirts, with the stretch going opposite the stretch of the tees, and iron them on securely. I didn't buy enough interfacing! The 9 yards only lasted for 16 of the shirts! I have 8 shirts left. Fortunately, it is only $0.99 per yard, so I figure another 5 or 6 yards should do the trick, and not be too pricey. Ironing on to the 16 shirts took about 2 hours.

Then I centered and cut out the 12 1/2 inch squares from each of the 16 shirts with interfacing, which only took about 30 minutes. This is what I have to show for my work on this project:

Sorry the picture is a little dark and blurry. I left my good camera at work by accident, so I had to use my phone.

I feel pretty good about todays progress. He doesn't need it until the 27th, but because we are closed the 25-28 I have to have it done before Christmas. No big deal, right? Throw it on the stack of 50 bazillion other things I'm working on! :)

Stay tuned for more Adventures in a T-Shirt Quilt! I will be working on it every night, hopefully, so I'll definitely keep ya'all posted on my progress. This is so fun, because I have always wanted to do one, but not had the time, and now I have to do one for a client, so it works out! :)