Can You Say "Shirtzapalooza?"

There was only two of us last night, but my friend Laura and I had a few hours of fun cutting up some of the shirts we scored last weekend (and on some other thrift store trips). I had to take a photo of Laura's shirts - she had a total of 25!

We started cutting them apart and found that it's not as quick a process as we assumed. There's yokes and bulky seams. There's sleeves with inserts (never seen that before). There's different cuffs and button plackets.

We're saving the shirt tags to add to the back of the quilt (or quilts, since I think we have enough fabric to make at least 3!) and the buttons.

Some of the shirts have great pockets that will also be saved for the back. They'll be great to put notes in about the quilt when it's finished. One of Laura's shirts had the coolest flap pocket (it's a
Levi's shirt) and will be a fun addition to the back of one of her quilts. Two I saved have velcro flaps.

Another shirt gave us over 2 yards of fabric. I took a picture of my daughter in it - XXXXL. She's a size 0.

After taking the shirts apart, next will be to separate the fabrics into light and dark values. Laura has some wonderful red and brown plaids and terrific teal blue shirts. The shirts I found were more muted, so they all complement each other.

We decided on a pattern from a quilt magazine (sorry, I don't remember which magazine) but it's a nice nine-patch and split rail variation. I'll see if I can replicate it in EQ5. It gives us a good start for cutting pieces out of the shirts and for planning on how to sew all these plaids and stripes together.

We didn't get to all the shirts - after a few hours I'm not sure we even got to half of them. Who knew it would take as long? But I'm excited to keep going.

I have other projects in the works this weekend. I'll post another update tomorrow.

Happy and safe holiday to everyone!