Tee shirt quilt top
 

I finally finished the tee shirt part of the quilt top that I've been procrastinating about for weeks (OK, it's been months). It's going to hang in the town hall to bring attention to this year's charity run.
I still have to add the border, a teal-blue batik. I haven't cut it yet - any suggestions for the width?

I'm planning to follow the members' advice here and omit batting, since it's heavy enough already.
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Like the background. Wonderful.

You did a great job on it! I know it was a real chore and you must be relieved to have it almost done! I am probably not much help on border suggestions as I do not normally do borders on most of my quilts. But you do need one to Finish the blocks on the edges. I would make the border (in the same background fabric) the same width as your background strip between the 2001 block and the long rectangle block underneath it. Your teal border sounds perfect.

great t shirt quilt. love the background fabrics.

Beautiful top. Great job.��

Try different widths:
1st width of side border
2nd: width of top and bottom inside border.
See what is pleasing to look at and go with it.

very nice!!!

Nice work on this!

Great quilt!

Great job!

LOL - NONE of it is pleasing to me! Although I understand that they have their purpose (this will promote a charity event) quilts with words are just not my cup of tea. It's been a struggle to summon enthusiasm for it, so I'm just giving it my best shot.

Thanks for all your kind words!

If I may ask another question - how would you suggest I quilt this? I got a big spool of teal blue that's a shade darker than the border (border has been done - matching the top and bottom rows, as y'all suggested). I'd rather not quilt over the tee shirt images, at least not in a strongly contrasting color. Should I switch to a color that's similar the the tee-shirt background fabric and outline the house logos? Will that quilting be close enough to make it stable? Do I leave the teal in the bobbin, or is that asking for trouble? It may show on the front.

I made 2 T shirt quilts for my grandsons. I would use invisible thread on the actual T shirts and just a minimum amount to hold the batting in place. Some batting allow for 8" between quilt lines.

There's no batting.

Very nice quilt!

With no batting, how close should quilting be? Just enough to prevent the two layers from acting floppy?

Manalto, I'm waiting in the wings for some suggestions from the QB members as to how to quilt your t-shirt project. I, myself, am ready to put a t-shirt quilt on a longarm and having the same dilemma as you. Mine, however, will have Warm & Natural batting.

What did you decide for the border? I liked Tartan and JeanneS suggestions.

I would do as Jeanne said and put another border of background. Can be as narrow as you like, maybe less than two inches. But after that, a tiny stop border would really bring it out. A thin line of something very dark, even black. And then the last wider border of something else, maybe even the background fabric. The teal sounds good.

I've seen T-shirt quilts that have been machine quilted with a large stipple all over the entire quilt (yes, all over the t-shirt) and it looked great to me. I would have questioned doing so beforehand, but was surprised how nice it looked when finished.

I agree with Tartan on both the quilt and the border size.

Looks great. I love your border and sashing fabric.

I changed my mind and put a thin poly batting after all. (It seemed scrawny without it.) I also changed my mind about treating the tee shirts as sacred, that is, avoiding going over them with quilting stitches. I'm going to use a medium-dark teal and do a large meander over the whole thing - maybe it will "unify" it somewhat.

I completely missed these comments on page two. I used another batik (the background is multi-color batik) for a 5" border - the same size as the top and bottom rows - in a medium teal with a lighter spatter; it resembles raindrops on a waxed car to me.

As I mentioned above (not having read Sharon's comment, but I appreciate the validation) a large stipple it is.

Here's a close-up of the border and some of the quilting. For the FMQ, I was sold serging thread (I told the salesperson what it was for), not knowing it's weaker. After my blood pressure went into the red zone, I went out to find regular thread in a matching color. Among the dozens of colors on the rack, there was ONE small spool that matched. Ordered online and received yesterday. When I'm done with this, I never want to see it again.
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