I've been working on this customer quilt top for several days now. The customer's husband must have been a Harley Davidson fan for quite some time now. His HD tee shirts come from all over the United States.I haven't counted the number of shirts that I used in the quilt, but it's quite a few. Some of the shirts have interesting fronts and backs, so I tried to keep those together, but I didn't worry about which side I attached on top. It was enough to keep them together.
Since my customer wanted me to arrange them in a puzzle configuration, I decided to put these two black shirts together so that they would look like one large block from a distance. I may even quilt them the same since the designs make quilting almost impossible in their centers. Stitching through the rubbery screen printing ink is a mess. The thread shreds as the needle punches through the heavy ink. 
When I have a shirt with a full design, I try to find a line or two where there is no ink. Sometimes, the printer chooses to skip the spaces where the shirt color will suffice.
An example of that would be the Grand Turk design on the left. Although the design is heavy, there are places without ink, the tan parts of the motorcycle, the character's face, and between the letters.
The Renegade shirt is one that will be difficult because there are no open spaces in the design. To handle that one, I'll have to slowly stitch through the ink, going around the Indian character. To ensure that the shirts don't stretch, I'll quilt some small motifs, trying to find some that will work with the overall design of the individual shirts.
Hopefully I'll be able to get started on the quilting this weekend. I plan to go the Baton Rouge from Wednesday to Friday to help with the Beta Convention talent groups. I go behind stage and boss people around. Remember (click here) how I did that last year and had fun? Well, I get to do it again.
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What a great selection of t-shirts, though I don't envy you the tricky quilting.
ReplyDeleteThat is a big job. Well done on combining the shirts so effectively And good luck with the quilting!!
ReplyDeleteNicely done!! Your client is going to be SEW pleased.
ReplyDeleteSuch skill and work that goes into T-Shirt Memory quilts. I had heard of them, but I never really thought about how one quilts through the ink on the shirt! Thank you for sharing your knowledge!
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