Normal According to Me!

A few years ago (okay 2 or 3... maybe more) my disc golfing son, Matt, gave me a basketful of t-shirts and asked me to make him a wall hanging.

There were around 30 shirts, with most of the print being 12"-16" square. That would have made one HUGE wall hanging!!

I really like the free-form style of "Too Cool T-Shirt Quilts" by Andrea Funk. I've made a couple of them like that in the past and decided to do it again.

These t-shirts aren't laid out in simple rows and columns, I needed a way that I could move them around without stretching them out of shape. Since I'm a computer nerd, I took pictures of all of the writing - fronts, backs, sleeves, pockets... all of it. I placed a ruler next to each one so I knew what size each was.

Then I opened each picture with GIMP, a free photo editing software program similar to photoshop, and squared them up and cropped them down to the essentials. I'm very familiar with Microsoft Publisher, so I created a document with a custom "paper" size of 40" x 40". Then I imported all of the photos into the document, and resized them - remember I have a ruler in each picture, so I can get it pretty exact. For the "Too Cool" method, each t-shirt block must be a multiple of 4". I also added text to the pictures so I knew what size I needed to cut them.

Once the pictures were sized properly, I was able to move them around to come up with a pleasing design, or rather three pleasing designs! I didn't want to print out a full size document, and have to tape all those pages together, so I took a screen shot and printed that out and finally got to work with scissors.

First I cut them oversize. It's too hard to maneuver a whole t-shirt so you get a nice cut, so I just cut them about a half inch bigger (plus seam allowances) all the way around. I also cut some featherweight iron-on interfacing to the proper sizes. It took a whole bolt for the three wall hangings. Thank goodness for 50% off coupons at Joann's.

Normally the "Too Cool" method doesn't use interfacing. A cotton t-shirt will hold it's shape well enough. Most of Matt's shirts were that kind of silky, moisture-wicking fabric, and knowing it would be hanging on a wall, where gravity would do it's darndest to stretch it out of shape, I decided to go with the interfacing. It took forever to finish ironing it on! Once that was done, I was able to easily cut them to their final sizes and get to sewing.

Sewing them together went pretty quickly, and I was excited to see them come together. Once done with that, I had to decide how to quilt them. I wanted the quilting to have something to do with disc golfing. I thought of several things - disc golf baskets and discs - but those were too big and would take away from the t-shirts. I could go with in-the-ditch quilting, but that's boring. I finally came up with an easy free-motion chain design, and I decided to add disc golfing terms too. I even included Matt's PDGA (Professional Disc Golf Association) number on each wall hanging.

I got the wall hangings done just in time for Christmas, and he loved them! People have asked me what my favorite Christmas gift was. Honestly, it wasn't one that I received, but rather one that I gave. It was the appreciation my son showed for those wall hangings. As a creator, you're never quite sure if the recipient is going to like what you've poured your heart and soul into. It was a great feeling to see Matt take those home and hang them up immediately, then post to Facebook about his "Awesome Mom!!"