My First Commission Quilt

About a month before we started The Artist's Way journey, I was asked to make a t-shirt quilt for my friend. I picked up the t-shirts, and they sat there for a long time. I had seen a number of t-shirt quilts at a quilt show I had recently attended, but I was not excited about them. Either all the t-shirts were cut the same size, with no regard for the design on the shirt; or they had been cut different sizes and then fabric strips were added so they were all a uniform block size, based on the largest t-shirt design. Frankly, I thought both ideas took away from the unique designs of each of the t-shirts.

Then I read that you should just experiment and see what happens. So I did. Now, after I got started I thought, "Maybe experimenting with someone else's irreplacable Peachtree Road Race t-shirts is not the wisest idea," but I had already started. So I kept going. I cut all the t-shirts to the size that the design dictated. Then, I laid them out on the floor to make a design that I liked. Most t-shirts are white or gray, so I needed to be careful about the color placement. I then decided that I didn't want the borders to be straight. So I allowed the t-shirts to hang over the borders. Then one t-shirt said, "I really should be a circle" to me, so I made it a circle. And here is the result...

Here is my favorite "block" of the quilt...


When I went to quilt it, I did not want to take anything away from the t-shirts. Afterall, my friend had run a lot of miles to earn all of these. I quilted in the ditch, which was not close enough together. So I picked a motif on each shirt and quilted it. Here are two shirts...

I quilted the outline of Georgia on this one.I quilted around the shoe on this one.

I delivered the quilt today. I got paid more than I asked, which made me very happy. I also had a lot of fun doing this quilt.