T-shirt applique

Hello again!

After long break (I got married and had a long honeymoon in the meantime) I´m back with a very easy little project. Took me only a few hours to make something I will enjoy for a long time.

Lately I´ve bought a few T-shirts on sale. They have nice colours, but they are a bit borring, so I decided to make them prettier.

On the light green one I´ve decided to make a colourful applique of butterflies

 

I used a stencil to make the shape of butterflies in different sizes.

Great library of stencils can be found here:

stencil-library.co.uk

Then I sewed them around using a satin stitch.

And now I´ve got an unique T-shirt. Nobody else has the same :-)

what to do with all the old pairs of jeans??? part 1

Do you have lots of jeans in your wardrobe? I bet you know you will never wear some of them, because they are out of fashion/ too small/ too big/ not as comfortable as they used to be when you tried them in the shop (ok, maybe it´s just me who do the last one) ....

They just clutter the space in your wardrobe causing your frustration?

If you wish you had some way to use them this is a project for you :)

A denim quilt like this one...

 

It´s not so difficult, even if it looks like it. Believe me or not, I´ve never made a quilt before.

 

The only thing you need is about 7 pairs of jeans, contrasting materials (I used beige and light blue cos these are the colours of our living room) and LOTS of time - if you want to sew everything by hand like me, or less time if you plan to use the machine.

The first and most important part is planning. 

OK, OK it´s not the best quality sketching, but it did the job.

I´ve decided that I want to have the back pockets in the middle, so first I had to measure all the pockets (in different pairs of jeans they are different size, so make sure you take the larger ones as a base).

My largest ones were 16cm, so the middle squares are this size. 4 squares in the corners are 8x8cm and the triangles have 2 sides of 8cm and one of 11cm. I left 1,5cm extra around all the pieces.

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The best is to cut all the pieces from the paper and then simply draw on the material

For the quilt like my one 4 rows and 5 columns you will need:

• 20 denim squares 16cm x 16cm (all the measures are without 1cm for sewing around)
• 80 denim squares 8cm x 8cm
• 160 denim triangles 8cm x 8cm x 11cm
• 160 beige triangles same measure as above
• 49 rectangles 32cm x 5cm
• 30 light blue squares 5cm x 5cm

I know, the amount of triangles is impressive, when I counted them I couldn´t believe!

Now the fun part (require a bit of room) to put all your main pieces and decide how to design your quilt.

 

where to locate the light and dark pieces so all look good together?

When you made your choices and are happy with the effect it´s a good idea to write the numbers on the other side of all the pieces. This way you will stick to the original design and the writing won´t be visible inside the quilt anyway.

Part 2 coming soon!!! :-)