Today I’m going to share a bit of problem-solving with you for your T-shirt quilts.
Most T-shirt designes are pretty well centered, with some room all the way around.
But sometimes the design of a T-shirt goes right up to the armhole, making it difficult to cut a square corner and get all the important bits.
Take, for example, this Fraggle design.
I cut this out as close to the arm seam as possible, but Mokey Fraggle is right up against the cut. The sleeve fabric was kind of yucky and worn there – so I definitely wanted to cut it away – but I didn’t want to lose Mokey!
I made the cut and did the interfacing as though there was fabric there. (I didn’t press that loose corner of interfacing – that would have fused it to the ironing board. I just left it unpressed while I fused the rest down.) Then I cut out the image – again pretending that there was fabric in that corner.
Of course, the next step is to sew in some real fabric to replace the pretend stuff. 🙂
I cut a strip of fabric big enough to cover the missing corner, laid it along the edge of the armhole cut, and sewed it in place with a straight seam.
Then I flipped the strip over the corner and pressed the seam flat (from the back so I didn’t smear the image).
Trim the corner to square up the block.
Then frame it out just like all the other blocks.
Problem solved!
I ran into the same issue with the Nyan Cat T-shirt.
And solved it the same way. 🙂
Here’s what the blocks look like so far.
I’m hoping to finish all the blocks this week, so next week will be joining, basting, quilting and binding. In my dreams I’m handsewing the binding while I watch Diane Gilleland’s T-shirt Quilt class and learn all the things I could have done better. (It looks amazing and it’s free! Sign up here and watch with me!) In reality I’ll probably be doing it in the car on the way to drop Jo off at school. 😛
Read all the posts about my T-shirt quilt here.
Happy quilting!
Best,
Wendi
