T-Shirt Blanket Tutorial PART II

Have you finished all of the steps in Part I?? 

Lets get cracking on Part II!

STEP SEVEN:

(Optional! You will need to use a regular sewing machine for this step!)

You might have t-shirts that have small graphics on them - mostly that front left breast pocket location. If these are something you want to include without chopping out a big 11x11" square to use it, follow these steps!

Repeat steps 1-3, only this time cut out a cardboard or foam board piece measuring about 5x5 inches.

Once you get all your little pieces cut out....

Position them in the blank spaces on the blanket. They could go anywhere you want. If the edges overlap one of the larger graphics just a little bit, that's okay. You will be cutting down the size of your small squares once they are sewn on!

Once you have them just where you want them, PIN THEM INTO PLACE! 2-4 pins may be needed to make sure they don't slide around. 

Now you get to work sewing them on. I didn't go to the trouble of hemming the edges because I want a more rough look. Jersey is a fairly good fabric to leave raw edges with, as they don't fray easily. 

Basically, you will want to go around the outside of your graphic, however close to the graphic itself that you want. You can also sew it in any shape that you want! For best results, use the zig-zag stitch, and make sure you are holding all fabrics flat! Here are two examples: 

(Forgive the ugly stitches! My machine needs to be serviced ...Sigh!)

Now, trim off the excess fabric...

Once you get all of these small graphics sewn on, it's time for....

PART EIGHT:

Backing/Binding fabric prep

This is where the full sized jersey sheet set will come in handy! You can use whatever fabric you like, but keep in mind that over time, the t-shirt fabric will stretch. This is why I choose to do all of my t-shirt blankets with ALL jersey fabric so the front and the back move and stretch the same way.

First things first, cut the stretchy cord off of the fitted sheet. Don't spend too much time being meticulous here...just chop that cord right off! 

Once the cord has been removed, you will need to get rid of the "corners" on this same sheet. You may rip the seams out with a seam ripper or just chop them off (like I did). When you lay out the fitting sheet on the floor, this is what you will be left with: 

Time to cut! Follow the black dots marked below. These long strips of fabric you are cutting off are going to become the binding, or "frame" of your t-shirts. You can make the frame of your quilt as wide or as narrow as you want! I am going to make it as wide as possible to make the most of all of the fabric I have. They ended up being about 11" wide for me.

Once they are cut off, cut the two shorter pieces to be the same exact WIDTH as your sewn-together t-shirts. 

The two longer pieces will need to be the the LENGTH of your sewn together t-shirts PLUS 2x the width of your frame.

FOR INSTANCE: If my sewn together t-shirts measure 60" in length, and the width of my frame is 11"

it would be...

60 + (11x2) = 88

So my long pieces of jersey will need to be 88" long! 

PART NINE:

Sew on the "Frame"

Reminder: All sewing occurs on the WRONG SIDE of the fabric!

Pin and sew the two shorter pieces to the TOP and the BOTTOM of your t-shirts, almost as if you are just adding another row of shirts (See Step Six) (REMEMBER: Right sides together!!)

You'll end up with something that looks like this...The red lines indicated where you should have made a new seam.

Next, line up the sides of the quilt frame (Right Sides Together!), and sew these pieces on, from top to bottom. The seams for these pieces will be located where these red lines are:

YAY!!!

BUT WAIT!! We aren't done yet!

STEP TEN:
Backing

This part is very tedious and may require the help of a second person. FIRST lay down the regular sheet from your sheet set (The one you didn't cut up), as flat as possible, with the RIGHT SIDE facing UP!
NEXT, lay down your newly framed t-shirts FACE DOWN on top of the first sheet.
Chances are, the regular sheet will be bigger than your framed t-shirts. That's a good thing! You do not want this sheet to be smaller than your framed t-shirts! If it IS smaller, you will have to trim down the width of your frame until it fits.
Pin the edges of your framed t-shirts down to the sheet. Make sure the pointy ends of your pins are pointed towards the center of the blanket! At this point, you can trim off the excess fabric on the regular sheet, using the edge of your framed t-shirts as a guide.

BEGIN SEWING!
This is the most sewing you will do on this entire project in one sitting! BUT BE WARNED!!! Do NOT sew all the way around the edge!!
Here is a guide for how you will need to sew the edges:

The red lines indicate what needs to be sewn...you can see I've left about a 10 inch gap. This is very important! You'll see why is a second.

If you are using a serger, then you trimmed off all of your excess fabric as you were sewing!
However, if you are using a regular sewing machine, follow this trimming pattern:

If the red is your stitching, then follow the black lines to trim off your excess fabric. cut diagonally around corners. Don't trim too close to the stitches!!

STEP 11:

FLIP IT!! 

Easy and fun step! 

Reach into that hole your left in the bottom of the blanket and flip the entire thing right-side out. Once you have it completely flipped, you will need to reach in and poke out the corners, so they are not all bunched up on the side. 

STEP 12:

(LAST STEP!!!!!)

TOP STITCHING

Here is where you will need to be very careful with your sewing...Why? Because it's going to show! Please note that if you have been using a serger, it's time to break out the trusty old sewing machine!

Firstly, top stitch the edge of the blanket. This will accomplish two things: It will give your blanket a nice finished look and it will keep the front and back of the quilt from slipping around. 

 But I'm sure you remember that giant hole we left at the bottom of our blanket...

Never fear! Top stitching will seal this hole right up. But first you need to pin it closed, making sure all the rough edges of the fabric are all tucked into the inside of the blanket - out of sight!

Slowly stitch over this area, making sure you are staying close to the edge of the fabric. Remove pins as you go (remember, don't sew over then! You could break your needle!)

Don't forget to backstitch to reinforce your stitches. Here is my finished edged right on top of where the hole used to be! Nice and sealed up, now.

LASTLY!!!!

QUILTING!

The word "quilting" simply means to join two or more layers of fabric together to create a thicker, padded material by doing top-stitching. Any quilt made by grandma or bought at the store will have this. Some patterns are simple (check out the comforter on your bed. It likely has about six or seven long top-stitches in it. That's quilting!) But some patterns are crazy complicated! For example:

Holy cow!  If only I had the patience...

But for this jersey t-shirt quilt, we will be doing a simple form of quilting that I call "Single Point Quilting".

FIRST!

Lay your quilt down flat on the floor, with the t-shirts facing up. Make sure there are no wrinkles in either the front nor the back fabrics! 

Place a pin at each corner of every square. Make sure you are getting all the way through to the back fabric when pinning.

SECOND!

Get sewing.

You have several options for doing the actual stitching. 

In the past, I have used a machine to make a small "X" at every pin-point. 

However, for this quilt I will be hand-stitching some sewing floss to the quilt!

If you're wondering...THIS is floss!

Grab your needle and thread it with the floss....follow these picture instructions for a single stitch finish.

 1. Come up from behind the pin-point

2. Go right back down!

3. pull through, so you have a small tail...

4. Tie into a strong knot

 5. Trim off excess.

 6. Tada!!

And REPEAT REPEAT REPEAT!

In similar fashion, you can sew this on the opposite way, so that the knot appears on the FRONT of the blanket! In the past, I have done this and left the string a little longer to give it a sort of shaggy look!

If you want to be a little fancy with your pin-point stitches, you can add a bead or button:

Once you have all the quilting complete....the time has come to cozy up and get comfortable! Your blanket is complete!! You now have the satisfaction of recycling your old shirts and preserving the memories behind them.

Now what can we do with all that left over jersey we cut the t-shirt graphics out of??? I'm sure we'll come up with something ;)

Happy Sewing,

artful.Anthropology

T-Shirt Blanket Tutorial PART I

If you're like us, you might have the trash bag, drawer or closet full of old t-shirts you don't want to part with. Some of them are sentimental, some of them are funny...whatever your reason for not wanting to part with them, the fact of the matter is you probably aren't wearing these shirts anymore. So what to do with the pile of unworn t-shirts? 

T-Shirt Blanket!!!

What You'll Need:

30 (or more*) T-Shirts

1 Set of Queen-Sized bed sheets

1 piece of cardboard/foam board/card stock (at least 11x11)

1 dark colored sharpie

Dress maker's shears
Sewing pins

A ruler

A sewing machine OR serger

*Do not make your quilt larger than 6 squares wide, or 7 squares long. Anything larger than this will require King or California King sized bed sheets!

STEP ONE:

Make your quilt square pattern!
Using your cardboard, foam board or card stock, trace out a perfect 11x11 square using the sharpie. I've found that 11x11 inches is the perfect size for this job, but if you would like to give yourself more wiggle room you can make it bigger. You may want to measure the width and height of your SMALLEST t-shirt to make sure there is enough fabric, and also measure the width and height of the largest t-shirt GRAPHIC to make sure you won't be cutting off anything (if that sort of thing bothers you).

STEP TWO:

Trace your pattern onto all of your shirts! 

Use a sharpie, and there is really no need to be perfect. Just trace that square onto every shirt you want to use! Make sure to center everything, making sure you aren't cutting off pieces of the graphic....

Sometimes you might have to get creative with your pattern placement...the 11x11 rule works MOST of the time! 

For those dark-colored shirts you want to use, never fear... BLACK sharpie tends to show up just enough for your to be able to see the line and cut it! If you are having trouble seeing the line on dark fabrics, try using white chalk.

STEP THREE:

Cut those squares out! 

Using the dress maker's shears, cut out all of your blanket squares. Dress maker's shears make this process much faster and much neater. Most t-shirts are made our of a material called jersey, also known as the words most annoying fabric to cut. You can try to use regular scissors for this job, but be warned that scissors that are often used on paper may be too dull to cut this material!

Cut right along the sharpie line you made...

And ta-da!! You have a jersey square ready to become part of a beautiful new blanket!

STEP FOUR:

Organize your squares

Once you have all 30 of your shirts cut into squares, lay them all out on the floor to see what you've got. Maybe you want to put all of those concert t-shirts in chronological order, or maybe you want to make a rainbow! Whatever the method, now is the time to lay our your squares in their ultimate configuration. Lay them out 5 t-shirts wide, and 6 t-shirts long.

As you can see, when I was starting out I was short a few t-shirts...However, this helped me to form a good idea for a "theme" for this blanket! Geeze, we got a lot of t-shirts from our school days...

Once I scrounged up enough t-shirts it was time for.......

STEP FIVE:

Sew six rows of five

Something to remember about ANY sewing project is that when you are sewing two pieces together, you ALWAYS want the "right sides" facing each other. The "right side" is simply the side of the fabric you want to have showing. 

With these blankets, I like to sew the rows together first, from left to right. 

Here, I sewed the first two squares together already. I want to add the third, and of course, all subsequent squares! Hmmmm.... 

Take the next square in line and flip it upside down. The place it directly on top of the square you want to sew it to. 

Next, stitch along the right side of the squares.

Open this up and...TA-DA!!

REPEAT REPEAT REPEAT until you have six rows of five! 

STEP SIX:

Sew your six rows together!

At this point, if you are using a regular sewing machine, you will need to cut off the excess fabric. Follow the link and trim according to cut #1.

REMEMBER: Right sides together! I like to sew the rows together from bottom to top. Flip the row above the bottom row down onto the bottom row. This time, you may need to pin the side you want to sew together (the top edge shown here). When pinning, be sure that the pointy end of the pins AREN'T pointing OUT. This will ensure that you won't stick yourself and also will be easier to pull the pins out while you are sewing!

Once you have these two rows sewn together, when you open it up it should look like this!

Once you get ALL the squares sewn together it should look like one big block of t-shirts, like SO:

Once again, trim off the excess fabric from the back of your quilt front if you are using a regular sewing machine.

*If you are finished with all of these steps, please proceed to T-Shirt Blanket Tutorial PART II!!*

Part II is on its way! In the mean time, go gather all the t-shirts you can find and GET SEWING! 

Happy Sewing!

a.A

How To Thread A Serger

Serger's are fantastic machines. You can sew AND cut off the extra fabric at the same time?! Not to mention, you get a lovely finished edge. It cuts sewing time in half and can make you look like one heck of a pro even if you are just a beginning sewer...However...They are also horrifyingly complicated when you have a look inside.

YIKES! That's a lot of moving parts...But it is very important to get familiar with all these moving parts and to understand what they do before you ever sew a scrap of fabric. 

Often, people sewing on a serger will find themselves asking...

Why is my serger coming un-threaded?

Why is the thread breaking?

Have I broken my serger??

Why doesn't my serger work?! AHHH!!

The solution to 99.9% of these questions: Threading.

Before you run off to a sewing machine repair shop and fork over $100+ dollars because you think you've broken your machine, make sure that the machine has been threaded properly. The first place to look might be inside the machine itself. On this Babylock, the instructions on how to thread it are right inside the door:

If you don't have something like this, I suggest having a look in your user manual. If you don't have a user manual, then search Google using your machine's make and model. Just about every machine's user's manual can be found on the interwebs these days!

HOWEVER, even WITH the user's manual...things can go all sorts of wrong. Every threading tutorial I have ever read, including the one in my manual, seems to leave out some all-powerful step...until now.

Your user's manual can get you at least through half of the steps. Here are the basics from my machine (with the all-powerful tips included), and from what I can tell, these are pretty basic steps for all sergers:

1. Move the upper knife out of your way

It's big. It's sharp. It's in your way. All serger's have a method that allows you to swing the knife up. Mine has a small lever that allows you to gently push it to the right, and a knob that allows you to twist it up. Yay! 

2. Thread the UPPER LOOPER

In this picture, the upper looper is outlined in yellow. Thread this looper by following your machine's guides. Be sure to lace the eye at the very tip of the looper from front to back. IMPORTANT: Your thread at this point may be crossing IN FRONT OF the lower looper (shown here in red). Make sure you gently move this thread BEHIND the lower looper!

3. Thread the LOWER LOOPER

Shown in the above picture in red, again follow your machine's guides. Once again, be sure the thread is laced through the eye from front to back. IMPORTANT: You IN NO WAY want the thread of the upper looper and the thread of the lower looper to tangle together. Remember that thread from the upper looper that you may have gently moved behind the lower looper?  Do not let the thread from the LOWER LOOPER be ABOVE this thread. You need to be able to hold both strands from the fully threaded loopers out to the left side of the machine...and they should in no way cross, touch or tangle.

4. Thread your Needles LAST! ALWAYS!

It sounds really silly, that something as simple as threading the needles last (always) could be the source of all of your problems...but in reality...it really could be. Even if one of the loopers' thread breaks or runs out, you MUST unthread the needles, and START THE ENTIRE THREADING PROCESS OVER AGAIN FROM THE BEGINNING. This is frustrating. This is time consuming. But it is what you must do.

Follow your machine's guides on how to thread these needles (going front to back through the needle eyes). Once again, these should not cross, touch or tangle with any other thread when held out to the left side of the machine.

5. Hand Crank Your Machine

Hand cranking will allow you to not only see your machine's working parts in action, but it will also give the machine a nice, slow start to its chaining process. Gently hold all four threads out to the left side of the machine with your left hand , and slowly crank the knob with your right hand. Do this until you have at least 2 inches of a chain. If it is chaining correctly...CONGRATULATIONS! You have just successfully threaded your machine! If it isn't chaining.......

A few common checks you can make are...
1. Is the top looper going up and catching on the right needle? If not, try lowering the right needle ever so slightly.

2. If the loopers don't seem to be moving as much as they should be, trying oiling your machine! 

3. If the threads are breaking or coming up-threaded, ensure you followed the threading instructions PERFECTLY, and also check your thread tention. 

6. Lower you Upper Knife, and test your machine with scrap fabric.

Testing your machine is always very important...you never want to ruin your actual project by....oh I dunno... accidentally leaving the upper knife in its up position, and ending up with a huge wad of fabric under the presser foot. (#AdmittingYourOwnFaults)

But that's all folks. I hope I have saved you a little bit of serger drama with this tutorial! I will leave you with one more handy piece of info!

So threading a serger is a pain, right?? RIGHT?? And you probably don't want to re-thread it every time you need a new color thread...RIGHT?? Well here's the trick...

Cut every single thread right above the spools. This will leave a piece of thread in-tact, following all of the guides, knooks and crannies you have worked so hard to lace it through. Go ahead and completely remove the needle threads (remember how you have to do these last? always? Unfortunately, this method also doesn't work for the needles, as a small knot in the thread will not pass through the eyes of the needles). Switch out your spools, and tie the ends of the new spools to the tails of the cut threads running through the machine to the lower and upper loopers. Make sure it is securely tied and pull the ends of the threads, effectively pulling the new thread all the way through the machine without the hassle of doing it all again by hand. The only thing left to do is lace the new thread through the guides for the needles, and hand-crank to make sure you did it all correctly! 

HAPPY SERGING!! 

artful.Anthropology

Update and Basket o' Babies

Good Afternoon Friends!

It has been a while since we have blogged.  In September we managed to have three successful yard sales and are currently selling our remaining stock at low prices.  Check out or Facebook page to see the items, they make great stocking stuffers!

At the moment we are playing with new concepts and developing new items for you!  We are also taking suggestions of what items you might want to see in the future, our zeppelins for example will be back by popular demand.

Our sweet bluebird hangs
 out in the forest

On a softer note, we have created a unique basket of gifts perfect for baby showers.  Our Basket o' Babies. You may choose six amigurumi animals to be placed in your basket in a variety of colors.  We are currently compiling a list of animals to be posted.  We can create an animal from any color found in Red Heart, Lion Brand Wool-ease or Vanna's Choice yarns.  Just take a look at what we've done so far!

Bluebird's friend Squirrel
is stopping to
admire the coleus
...and maybe take a nibble

Is that a kitteh stalking our woodland friends?

Looks like we have
a fish out of water!

The Pink Pony looks like
she's enjoying a graze

The penguin relaxes
against an icicle on his 'berg

While the snake visits,
whoa that must be cold!

And Octi is hiding in
 the shade

 These are just a few of our babies for Babies.  Don't forget to check out or Facebook page and message us if you are interested.

Cheers,
artful.Anthropology

Coming Soon

-Comprehensive list of amigurumi animals
-Our Komen Walk Bake Sale