Wednesday WIP

Well ... most of the WIP around here lately has been on the computer - blah business-y stuff, and some new patterns in the works - but I have managed to sneak in some sewing time on this fun t-shirt quilt, which also means that I finally have something to share for WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced.

{it's hanging sideways}

It's a commission project for a friend from my old job.  She's participated in a number of really fantastic breast cancer races and wanted to be able to display her {well-earned} trophies.  We included a couple of shirts from some of her favorite vacations so that she would end up with a nice, snuggly quilt full of great memories.

When I first started the project, I knew that I wanted to use some sort of stabilizer.  Pellon's website suggested using Pellon 950F Shir-Tailor®, so since that's always been my go-to brand, I figured that that's what I would use.  Unfortunately, when I got to the craft store, I found that it was way too thick.  Since I wanted minimal stabilization and optimum snuggle-abilty, I opted to go with Pellon P44F Fusible Nonwoven, which has worked like a dream!

One of the challenges with this quilt was to combine tiny, medium, and large sized prints into a cohesive project.  I have to admit, I was at a little bit of a loss as to how to start ... but once I measured all the shirts, I realized that they could all be easily rounded up to multiples of 3, which gave me a great starting point for planning and playing with graph paper cut-outs.

My first attempt resulted in lap quilt that was a great width, but ridiculously tall.  I realized, too, that a few of the panels were sideways {grrr}, but rather than shuffle my squares and start all over again, I tried the whole thing in Excel ....

... and it was sooooooo much easier to move the blocks around and come up with a layout that was a little more balanced!  I'm so happy with the way it's turning out and I know my friend will too!  My plan for this evening is to finish up the bottom row and the inner sashing rows.  I'm hoping to have enough of the great background fabric that she sent over to use as the outer border too.  It matches all the colors of the shirts so perfectly - I mean I couldn't have found a better match in months of searching!