Great Hockey Jersey Quilt in the Making

It's finally coming together - the great Hockey Jersey Quilt!

My nephew graduated from high school this spring and is going away to University very soon. He loves hockey and was a goalie in both Ottawa and Denmark, so a t-shirt quilt made up of a few t-shirts and many hockey jerseys is a perfect gift.

The Great Hockey Jersey Quilt needs one more row of t-shirts and borders

I've been working on this project for about a month. Typically when I am starting something new, I read the book!

I bought it at Martingale, my favourite quilting book shop. The book is Terrific T-Shirt Quilts by Karen M. Burns. It was really informative. Since you sort of have to make-it-up as you go with this type of quilt, it was great to get some ideas as well as technical information.

Terrific T-Shirt Quilts

Funky Monkey Fabrics

I was very nervous about sewing with stretchy fabrics. Not only did I have t-shirts but I also had all kinds of hockey jerseys! It turns out there's a great secret that makes these fabrics as easy to sew as regular cotton fabric! It's called FusiKnit Tricot Fusible Interfacing. You just iron it onto the back of the t-shirt or jersey and voila! You now have fabric that's easy to handle and sew. I bought it at Funky Monkey Fabrics, a Canadian fabric store, recommended by a colleague, that specializes in knits. The interfacing is only 20" wide, so I bought 5 yards. That was enough to back most of the hockey jerseys. I then had to order another 3 yards. Now I have enough to finish the quilt!

There are many different ways of putting a t-shirt quilt together. Since I'm not renown for my planning, I just started cutting around the logos and anything else that might be of interest for the quilt. My brother told me what was important but otherwise I was free to do as I please (my kind of project).

The interesting pieces were the ones where the front, the back and sometimes the sleeve were going to be part of the quilt. I didn't want to separate them, so I ended up piecing them together in different ways. Here are some of them:

Front of the jersey with a patch from the sleeve

This first block has the sleeve at the top to show the team colours, then the front of the jersey with a patch from the back .

The sleeve, front and back of the jersey

The second block is the front of the goalie jersey and a patch from the sleeve.

The third example includes the front of the jersey, which had to be cut in a particular way and so includes some additional piecing as well as one sleeve and then the goalie patch from the other sleeve.

The front as well as a sleeve and patch 

I will leave this post to finish up the top row. These have t-shirts of things that my nephew loved as a kid - Spiderman, Toy Story etc.

There are also a couple of blocks that I left blank. I will add various patches to these.

I used a few Kona cottons to make the sashing or borders around the blocks. Today I ordered the border and backing fabric from my favourite local online supplier - Mad About Patchwork. The crunch is on - my nephew leaves for school in 11 days!

I expect to be doing a whole lot of quilting next week :-)


What I learned:

• When using the FusiKnit Tricot Fusible Interfacing, it's important that the stretch of the interfacing is in the opposite direction to the stretch of the fabric. I highly recommend Terrific T-Shirt Quilts. The advice on working with knits was terrific and saved me a lot of headaches.
• When cutting up the t-shirts and jerseys, cut as large a piece as possible. It's much easier to cut off more than to sew it back together!
• I really like Kona cottons but I'm going to have to invest in a colour chart. It's so hard to keep track of which colours are which when you want to re-order anything. I have kept track of some of the fabrics by cutting a small piece and stapling it to the invoice before I wash them. Unfortunately I haven't always done that :-(
• BTW, the quilt is a surprise. My nephew doesn't read my blog....so don't tell him!

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Monday Making, Main Crush Monday, Fabric Tuesday, Let's Bee Social, Midweek Makers, Needle & Thread Thursday, Off the Wall Friday, Oh Scrap!