Tuesday, June 4, 2013

The Forever Project - Part 2

It was over a year ago that I first posted about The Forever Project.  A friend of mine asked me to make him a quilt with his large collection of concert t-shirts.  I was happy to help, and he mailed the shirts to me in April 2011.  Yup, over 2 years ago.

His only request was that the quilt not end up looking like a giant checkerboard, which seemed logical enough at the time.  I got to work right away ironing fusible interfacing to the back of each design and cutting them out to (more or less) match the size and shape of the design on the shirt.  Then I put them into a drawer.  For a year.

In May 2012, I made some embroidered blocks, with song lyrics he had asked me to include.  Since I was thinking about this project again (finally), I pulled the stack of shirts back out of hiding and laid them out on the top of my king sized bed, which they covered completely.  I started arranging them and realized that I should have spent more time thinking this through.... it is very difficult to attach squares and rectangles into a quilt when every single one is a different size.  Back into a drawer the entire pile went.... for another year.... 

From time to time, I would think about this quilt, try to make it work it my head, but it never came out of the drawer.  About a week ago, I decided enough was enough, I couldn't *actually* take forever to finish this quilt, even though that's the quilt's name -- The Forever Project.  So, back out they came, for the biggest, messiest game of Tetris I've ever played.


Layout 1: Too long, not wide enough.  Too many small homeless pieces.


Layout 27: Getting better, but still not quite right.


Layout 43: If we lose a skull, this may possibly work... 


Layout 92: The skull makes it's way back in!


I ended up printing out that last picture and drawing boxes around the "sections" I needed to create, in order to put this entire quilt together.  I ripped a few seams, made a few more changes, and I think I *finally* have the final layout figured out.  Maybe.  My goal is to finish putting the top together this week, since I'm leaving for 3 weeks in New York on Sunday.  I know I won't have the back done, but I'll sleep much better at night knowing that "forever" may actually arrive!

~*~ May your day be full of Love and Ladybug Hugs ~*~

Thanks for stopping by!
~ Kat ~

4 comments:

  1. Watching and waiting,it's going to be some quilt.
    I love that idea of using T shirts.x

    ReplyDelete
  2. I like it! And you have given me some ideas for the T-Shirt quilts I will be making for my 2 sons......I have the T-Shirts but that is it so far.....you beat me back to the blogging...I am still dragging my feet....haven't posted since May 3rd!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Kat, I made a memory quilt a few years ago for my brother, he had 2 garbage bags full of football & fishing shirts. I cut out all the badges to use in his quilt, now he has a quilt he can use instead of bags full memory's I have a picture of it at the following url. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BQPY1siPKYs/UMbBLCuaTrI/AAAAAAAAABY/npRYtPokU4E/s200/Memory+Quilt+.jpg

    ReplyDelete
  4. This is going to be an incredible quilt! I love it! And you couldn't get further from a checkerboard :)

    Also, thanks for visiting my blog. I couldn't email to thank you because your a noreply-comment@blogger.com

    ReplyDelete

~ Thanks for taking the time to leave me some feedback! ~