But making these blocks was looking to be more challenging than I thought. Not making the blocks, but finding the fabric. You see, I wanted this to be the "scrappy" part of the quilt and use men's shirts. Well after several weeks of visiting our local Goodwill I had only 3 suitable shirts... and I needed 15-20 to have a variety of fabrics! It seems the men's shirts donated in this area are all polyester, polos, plaid flannel or denim! Here it was the end of February and I was running out of time.
In steps my sister-in-law... she lives near Baltimore... lots of goverment and professional jobs! She scored and shipped me 15 shirts! THANK YOU Dorene!
I spent 5 hours deconstructing shirts. I cut off the sleeves and set the remaining body of the shirt aside for later. I then cut the seams and cuffs off of each sleeve. Then each sleeve was cut into 1.5inch strips. Now I have a washbasket full of strips to work with.
I spent there remaining days of February and all of March ... a total of 30 hours... sewing strings to paper, removing paper and trimming the blocks to 8 inches.
Then each block had to be cut in half diagonally and four of those halves sewn back together to make 20 eleven inch blocks and 18 half blocks.
