Commission TShirt Quilt

This is a commission quilt for the son of a friend. I have never seen as many t shirts as this kid had! It's the first time I have made a t shirt quilt with every block being a knit. All of the t shirts are backed with interfacing. As you can imagine, it's heavy! There is a narrow navy blue sashing and the 4 corners are cut from a hand dyed remnant.After doing the repairs on my nephew's quilt (to re-sew all of the hand stitched sashing) I decided that the binding would be totally machine stitched. I used the instructions from Judy Laquidara that she explained in this video. The secret to that technique working flawlessly is that you have to pin on the back side, like she does, and the pin only goes through the binding and a little of the batting. If you pin through all layers it will distort the seam and you will miss some areas while stitching. It's a lot of pinning but I like it much better than the glue and iron method.

I quilted this with the Ebb and Flow pantograph - one of my favorites for men's quilts. I struggled picking the quilting thread. A light was going to show too much in the dark blocks and a dark was going to show too much in the light blocks. I settled on King Tut Shifting Sands. That color doesn't appear on their color charts anymore so I suppose it's discontinued. That's too bad because this color blended perfectly with shades of gray and gold. I used Superior So Fine #432 in the bobbin. With such a thick quilt I didn't have any tension problems at all! Of course, the highlight of the quilt (IMHO) is the tie dyed backing.I centered the backing on the quilt. It was a a little fussy but was so worth it! The label isn't on the quilt in this photo and I actually considered not adding the label...but I did. If he wants he can remove the label easily enough.
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