About Those *SRC T Shirts...

(*SRC stands for Summer Reading Club)

Eileen is pictured here at my 2014 retirement party!  She is wearing the 2006 SRC t shirt.

This month marked another retirement for a colleague at my local public library.

  Congratulations, Eileen!

 

 She was my inspiration for the resulting project - when I made her an infinity scarf from a stretched and pulled tie-dye SRC t shirt as a retirement gift - it forced me to reckon with my collection of fifteen (used front and back of 1999 t shirt) once and for all!)

From 1999 to 2007, I designed the SRC t shirts, so I had a drawer full of the memories.

More of my stash came from my tenure at the library designed by another colleague.

 

 It just didn't seem right to donate these shirts to a thrift shop or rummage sale. Even though I am a "dinosaur" I can not give this 2002 shirt away:

Nor can I part with my favorite graphic designed for the 2001 SRC featuring a pink car with the carhop delivering a tray full of books!

Instead I laid out each t shirt and cut out two thirteen inch squares from each t shirt (front and back).

Sixteen t shirts = 32 squares.

From a solid blue cotton fabric, I cut out 32 13 inch squares. A lot of them to cut as they would be the "guts" of the t shirt "sandwich" squares!

To assemble the "sandwich," I placed the back of the t shirt square on a table top surface and lined up 2 blue cotton fabric squares on top of that with the top graphic of the t shirt design as the sandwich top.  Sounds confusing, but just visualize a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and you'll get it: bread on top and bottom of sandwich is front and back of t shirt and peanut butter and jelly are the two blue cotton ingredients of sandwich.  

 I then machine sewed an "x" through all four layers as shown above.  Using 1 inch seam allowances, sew eight mini squares to form a row, four rows of four t shirt squares to form a square and then eight more mini squares together for a bottom row.with a once inch margin around the sides - no batting needed. Eight small squares are sewn together for the top.

 

 

Have you guessed this will turn into a quilt?

 

A quilt just right to use to get cozy reading books for the

upcoming SRC season?

 

Yep!

 

  Once all the blocks are sewn together, it's time to blister yourself up cutting slits to "fringe" the blocks. Cut slits to the seam line.  Then launder to fray the cotton fabric and curl up the t shirt fabric.

FRONT OF QUILT:

BACK OF QUILT:

Oh, how I love joining the library's Summer Reading Club!  

But now that my t shirt collection has been reduced (cutting down, ya know?)

I may take a pass on the t shirt this year and stick to the books only.

Perhaps, though, this can be the start of  your SRC quilt dream!