Snoopy Quilt Part 1 Memories a Plenty

I used to think I would never be able to write a daily blog because I don't go anywhere and don't have an interesting life as a single mom, I keep busy but I'm not out saving the world.

I figured I would write for awhile and give up like most people do and there have been days where that idea sounds great but then one of the girls asks me about something and I tell them to look it up on the blog or someone asks for my advice on a medical issue and it is so easy for me to have them look up the answer on the blog rather than explaining the entire thing each time. 

I blog about what is going on daily in my world but I can't even remember the amount of times I take pictures to post a blog post about something but so many other things are going on that I skip over sections of my world in order to get something on paper and post something current. Over the years I have LOTS of things I took pictures, started posts and never got around to the actual post.

I often think at some point I posted about it because I took the pictures and wanted to post but when I go searching the actual posts, the actual post never happened.

I haven't posted anything about our reunion, Princess Five in cheer, or that she is the lead in the summer play, Princess Three home for a few weeks etc. I still never posted everything from girls camp. The list goes on and on over the years so at some point, if my life does actually get boring and slow some, I may get to post on those things but since they aren't current, they lose their excitement and I want to move onto something else I am doing so perhaps I may never actually get to those posts.

Princess Four moved out to college today and Princess Three and I are already working on a new project. Princess Three would like a quilt to take with her when she moves to a distant University to finish her Bachelors degree.

She wanted her t-shirt quilt but I didn't want her to make it until she was through collecting the shirts from university, missions etc. What she would put on the quilt now vs a few years from now could change.

Both of the older girls made their t-shirt quilts after their missions and getting their college degrees but what I realized she was thinking was that I made Princess Two a t-shirt quilt out of the Pooh shirts and clothes we wore over the years and when she attended the university that Princess Four will be attending, she had her "Pooh" quit and used to talk about how her roommates were so jealous about that quilt and when she missed me, she would wrap up in that quilt and feel like she was getting a big hug from me. Here is a link to that t-shirt quilt.

I told Princess I thought I may have enough Snoopy shirts to make a quilt she could take so I pulled out all the t-shirts I have been saving over the years for the girls and found LOTS of Snoopy shirts and some still had the tags on them but others we actually wore. The Woodstock one and several others were from someone who made the girls pillows out of t-shirts and the girls used those pillows for years. When they washed them and the batting became all clumpy, I took the stuffing out and put them in the "quilt" box.

Both sets of shorts have been worn by two different girls in the past few weeks but when I asked for all the Snoopy stuff for the quilt, they were donated to the cause. 

The little yellow dress, the girls all wore. I can picture them in it in my mind and know I have a few pictures of them in it somewhere. I hope I can find them to post while I am working on the quilt.

The first thing to do when doing a quilt like this is to set it out and get an idea of the sizes of items you have. Match up similar sized shirts so that you can keep the rows uniform. The rows don't all have to be the same size but everything on the row needs to be the same size. As you can see by the top picture, the tall shirts are on a row with the tall shirts and the shorter shirts are on a row with all shorter shirts.

Once you have them in rows by size, you swap around the shirts within the row so that no two colors that are alike touch so you are heavy with red on one side and all white on the other unless you are going for that look or the quilt doesn't look as aesthetic. I always take a step back and squint at the quilt and see if my eye is drawn to one side more than the other or if it looks "even" on the rows going up and down and right to left.

Once you have the placement in place, take a picture in case something happens and the shirts get out of order which will happen as you sometimes need to cut them up and sew them into a square or as you can see in these pictures, you need to take out zippers, snaps, elastic bands and other items that may make your quilt thick or items that could cause pain if you laid on them. Snaps and zippers should be removed before you cut the squares so that once you sew the square together, it isn't smaller than the other squares because when you take out zippers or snaps, sometimes you sew it together and the fabric doesn't stretch as much.

So, always take out the elastic and zippers BEFORE cutting the sqaures. Just take a seam ripper and unpick the seams holding the zipper in and then you will pin the front of the sweatshirt or jacket together and zig-sag over the seam where the zipper used to be.

On the shorts, boxers or other pants, some you can safely just unpick the stitches holding the elastic in but on one where the band is a different fabric, to get the elastic out, you may have to resew the band back onto the top of the shorts as they sewed the elastic on at the same time as the waistband.

I will keep you informed of our progress on this as Princess Three wants to help me make it. Should be a fun project to make together.