Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Tshirt Blanket

One day a while back I realized that I had a lot of souvenir t-shirts that I did not want to throw away and decided to make a blanket out of them.  My first blanket ended up being huge.
And then I didn't stop buying t-shirts so I created a second. This one a much more manageable size that is my throw blanket.











The front and back are the front and back of the tshirts, because I didn't want to lose the graphics.


So, a few months back my girlfriend asked if I could make one for her son. He has tons of tshirts from all his sports and she thought it would be a great idea for his room.

The other day I decided to get to work on it since the holidays were over and I had gotten a new sewing machine for Christmas.  I pulled out all the tshirts to see what size I could make the rectangles, since there was a variety of sizes. Then I created a pattern out of paper to eaily cut all the tshirts front and back and ended up with a pile of tshirt rectangles.


Once the rectangles were all cut I started playing with the order I wanted them to be in. 
Once I was happy with the order of the tshirts I started pinning and sewing, pinning and sewing. I forgot how much I enjoyed making these blankets and the new sewing machine made things even easier with it's automatic cutting of the threads! I made sure to be very careful with all the corners so they would line up and then I had the front and back done. I laid down the two halves right sides together and then added the lining on top. Then more pinning and sewing. Then it was the moment of truth; I flipped it inside right and it looked great.  The next step was sewing the opening closed.
In order to keep the lining together I did a few stitches in some corners and then TADA!

Some of the tshirts had button detailing at the neck line and I thought that would be a neat detail to keep.
I had a few thsirts left over so I thought I could make a little something extra...

... a pillow case. I hope he enjoys it! I know they are the most comfy blankets I have ever had.