A new summer project

Hi everyone!  It has been a busy week around here, with our customary heat and rain, and lots and lots of library time.  We were supposed to get the house power washed this week, but it didn't work out, so next week it is.  We did get rid of the wasps, though, so that's a good thing.  And I tried a couple of new recipes, plus made several loaves of lemon zucchini bread, which I sliced and froze so that I can have a piece every day for a while.

On the quilty front, first, some exciting news for me.  My quilt made of orphans and strings, called Misfit Toys, was accepted for the AQS quilt show in Virginia Beach!

I am so excited!  The very first thing my husband said was "we have to go,"  so I guess I'll even get to see it hanging.  I've never done anything like this before, so I'm a little freaked out. The closest I've ever some to having a quilt in a show is the "show and tell" portion of the quilt group I used to belong to.  Did I mention that I'm excited? 

The show isn't until October, so until then, it's back to the present. Now that it's August, I think I might want to start my "summer projects."  Yes, I thought I would get a lot more done this summer, but some things have not gone as planned.  Oh, well!  I've made a bunch of progress on some things, not so much on others, but have definitely not wasted my time.

My new "summer" project is a t-shirt quilt, a type of quilt I've never made before.  When my older daughter was in college and just after she finished, she worked for several political campaigns, all of which came with t-shirts and various other memorabilia.  When we moved, I asked her what she wanted done with them (because of course they were left behind at our house), and she said she wanted a quilt made from them.

Now that it's almost three years later, and I made her sister a Harry Potter quilt, I'm finally getting started on the project.  About time, right?  Yeah, she thinks so, too. First I cut up the t-shirts and rough cut around the motifs.  Mostly I just cut all the seams off and separated the shirts into what's essentially piles of fabric:

Now I have piles of what used to be sleeves, motifs, and then backs and fronts.  The next step is to fuse stabilizer to the backs of the motifs, then clean them up into more standard sizes.   It looks like most of them will be about 9 by 14 or so (these were big shirts.) Then I'll figure out the sashing and whatnot.  And just what I'll use for backing, too.  If anybody has any good suggestions, I'm open!

Cutting up the shirts was all I had time for this week, but it's a start! Hope everyone has a great weekend.  We are expecting heat and heavy rain.  Why try something different, right?

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Finished or Not Friday.