Oh, Waiting's So Hard To Do

I've never quilted before. It's not that I don't like them or anything, I just don't really sew all that straight, so I figured it would be an exercise in futility.

However, I recently decided to give it a shot. Mainly because I had a super cool idea for Kenzie's birthday present. (When a mom says she has a super cool idea for a birthday present for a teenager, watch out- it probably isn't. And knowing how my last super cool birthday idea turned out, I should have been more anxious. Oh well, I'm nothing if not optimistic.)

When we first moved into this house, Kenzie wanted a Spongebob room. (more Flickr pictures of her room here.) But, for the last year or so, she's been slowly covering up every inch of wall space with various posters. Goodbye SpongeBob, hello Rock 'n Roll (and Johnny Depp*).



As you can see, lots of music posters (the Janis poster used to be mine, and I was thrilled that someone wanted to use it). Kenzie plays guitar and every now and then there's talk of forming a band, but we haven't been invited to any gigs yet, so I think they're still practicing.



Anyway, I decided to take a bunch of black, band t-shirts and use them to make a duvet cover like this one (so I wouldn't need to actually have it quilted). I looked all over the internet for ideas and was given the helpful suggestion to iron interfacing onto the shirts before cutting to size, so that they wouldn't stretch out or curl up (when cutting or sewing). So, after three trips to the fabric store and the purchase of 2 different kinds of what is basically iron-on glue (Wonder Under and Heat n Bond- not what I should have gotten) I finally decided to actually look for the words 'Fusible Interfacing'. Duh. I'm OK with having bought the other stuff, though, because you just never know when you're going to need to iron two pieces of fabric together.

I was going to do a brief overview of the process, but it's fairly simple and is covered well here and here.

Basically, the main difference between this and a regular quilt is the use of fusible interfacing to stabilize the t-shirts. It's also easier because… 1) big blocks require less cutting and sewing and 2) it's a comforter cover, so there's no need to actually quilt.

What surprised me most about this project, is the fact that it actually turned out pretty great.



Oh, I also made a pillow out of one of the t-shirts that was smaller than I could use.




*Am I the only one that finds it extremely weird that my daughter's crushing on the same guy that I did when I was her age?