Creative Chicks: Alexander's T-shirt Quilt

Alexander is the son of my good friend Cindy. I've known him since he was born.

This Spring he graduated from high school. I told him that if they wanted to pay for the materials I would put the time in and make him a t-shirt quilt for his graduation gift.

Alexander was all over that.

He is a funny kid. He has Asperger's and is very OCD about some things. It was difficult for him at first to go thru all his shirts and "give" them away, even though the majority of them didn't even fit him anymore. However, having them in a quilt will make both him and his mom happy (i.e. less shirts in his dresser drawers sitting there doing nothing).

I had him go thru his t-shirt stash with me and he showed me the ones that for SURE had to go in the quilt and then depending on how the size and design ended up we had another pile of shirts to add to as needed. I didn't use up all the shirts he gave me, but we did use 24 of them. Not everyone will have that many shirts but Alexander NEVER wears a solid t-shirt....NEVER. It has to have some logo or something on it.

This is the first time I have put together a t-shirt quilt that didn't involve the majority to be school or sports themed shirts. In fact, he only had one shirt that represents his school. Instead, Alexander likes video games, goofy sayings, Star Wars, Pokémon, etc. So I had to pull that all together in this quilt.

Here is the top all put together before sending it off for quilting.

He picked out his sashing/border fabric as well as the backing fabric. He wanted to choose and not have me pick out something for him. Fine with me.

I just heard back that the quilting is done and I should get it back next week. I asked Lynn to quilt his name and graduation year on a blank block that I included in the quilt since he didn't have any shirts with his name. I guess I need to go find some binding fabric to go with now that I know the quilt is coming back.

Details:

Zelda and Gang fabric from JoAnn's. Needed 6 yds. for the backing and it couldn't be matched perfectly. I tried. From a distance it will hardly be noticeable.