Wardrobe Refresh–the Reveal

Here’s a recap of this project:

I wanted to make picnic blankets out of men’s shirts that I bought at the thrift store. I started by washing and starching the shirts and then cutting them into pieces. Then I cut them all into 2 1/2″ strips.

I sewed all the strips together into one long piece and then cut them into 24″ long pieces.

I gathered these into groups of 6 strips to sew into panels. And then I cut the panels perpendicularly to the seams to make strips of blocks.

Then we started a LOT of sewing. First we sewed the strips of blocks into rows that were 48″ long. Once we had everything sewed into 48″ long rows, we started sewing them together by twos, and then we sewed the twos into fours and then fours into eights, and the eights into sixteens. The final step was to sew all these panels together into the final size. There was some ironing in between to get all the seams flat.

We got everything sewed and then the final pressing with the iron for the block side and the flat sheet for the back and we had enough time to get it to the quilt shop to get it in line to be quilted and bound. I chose a chambray looking blue for the binding and ribbon candy for the quilting pattern.

Here is the finished picnic blanket/throw:

A HUGE thank you to my mom who helped so much on the quilt with instructions and matching and talking to me during all the boring sewing. Love you.