Ryan's Perdue Crew T-shirt Quilt

Just as the world started shutting down, Ryan was set to leave for a 8-9 week job in North Carolina.  When he's traveling that that, we tend to have more time at home and that usually means I can log some hours on my crafts.  Its fun to have something to keep me busy in the evenings, and, it feels great when I have something to show for all the hours.  Ryan's been asking me to make a t-shirt quilt for him with a stack of crew t-shirts his parents had been storing since he was in college.  He said that whenever they won a race, the teams they beat would give the winner the shirts off their backs.  So, this t-shirt quilt features logos and from a bunch of the teams they raced against, along with some of the bigger races their team participated in. 

This is the first time I'd ever tried making a t-shirt quilt and I am SO thankful I reached out to my quilter (Quilts by Kristy) to ask a few questions about the backing.  When I mentioned making a t-shirt quilt she gave me, by far, the best information I'll get this year.  She told me about a great fusible interfacing that took this project from being bound for disaster (and tears) to one that was enjoyable and actually quite quick to make.  I'm so glad I tried making one of these!  I learned SO MUCH on this quilt, and honestly, I'd be willing to make more of these.  The blocks tend to be large, 12 or 15 inches, which means you can whip up a quilt front pretty quickly.  You can see from the picture, that I used some smaller t-shirt pocket logos in arrangements of 4, along with t-shirt fronts/backs to fill out the remaining blocks.  I wished we'd had more shirts, but I made up for it by using boarders to make the blocks a little bigger and to standardize the sizes.  You can see the C LWT (bottom middle) block needed two boarders to make it the size of the Dad Vail Regatta square next to it.

For the backing, Ryan chose this Purdue fleece.  I was surprised he choose fleece, I'd have guessed it would be too warm for him, but I think the pattern caught his eye.  This was also the first time I used fleece backing.  Oh, and!  This was the first quilt I've made where the primary fabric color was black.  Here's what I learned about that!  Black, while great for a blanket that will be used a lot (it'll hide stains and spills) is HORRIBLE for showing dog hair!  No matter what I do, this quilt seems to be a magnet for hair and fuzz.  I can't tell if it' just because you can see it against the black, or, if this fabric combo means it's extra good at attracting hair.  Who knows!

I wish I'd have used a slightly different layout, I feel like instead of 3 across and 5 down, I should have done a 4x4 quilt.  It feels a little long and skinny to me, measuring out at about 60x90.  Ryan commented that it reminded him of the twin extra long beds we probably all remember from college.  Maybe that means I made it just the right dimensions.  A college t-shirt quilt for a college sized bed.  LOL.

I started this quilt at the end of Feb and had it fully finished, bound, labeled, washed and ready to use a few weekends ago.  The weather has turned to spring (THANK GOODNESS!)  and Ryan is home from his travel job now.  This quilt will probably hold some strong memories for me when I look back to when I made this - 8 to 9 weeks of mostly single parenting, through COVID, school and daycare closures, working while homeschooling, helping the kids navigate our  new normal all while trying to keep some things feeling the same.  For me, having projects like quilts and knitting gives me a sense of normalcy and anchors my days.  These projects help me de-stress, and honestly, that's priceless.