T-Shirt Fringe Pillow

What a Cutey-McCute-Pants idea, huh?  You're going to have to do some digging if you want to see this anyplace else on the web.  The only other spot I found this style of fringe was at THIS Etsy store.   If you saw my post yesterday, you know I'm working on a t-shirt quilt for Six-Foot Chick to take to college with her, using her old HS t-shirts.  Once again, after I trimmed the shirts for the quilt blocks, I wondered what I could do with the leftover fabric...  You know I just can't be trusted around scraps of fabric!  (I can hear my friends, now, "Honey, lock up the fabric scraps, Kim's coming over!")  The specs:

You will need:

• Base fabric, I used a navy duck, cut 18 1/2" x 18 1/2".  
• Various t-shirting scraps.  Mine are cute 1" x 4 1/2", using a rotary cutter.  I used about 40 strips of each color
• zipper

I sewed the strips in rows.  The stitched rows are about 1" apart, and each strip is about 1/2" apart.  I first started sewing free-form, but the bulk of the strips started pulling the fabric to the side, so somewhere about midway, I took the fabric out and drew sewing lines on with a quilting pencil (you could also use chalk).  I ended up also drawing a grid, because it looked like my stripes were veering up.  It sounds technical, but really isn't, and only took a minute or two.

If you want to make horizontal stripes, you will need to sew one row with one of EACH color in it.  For instance, if you sewed all green in one row, your finished stripes would end up vertical, not horizontal.  Since I wanted horizontal stripes, I sewed it this way:  Green, purple, blue, blue, black, repeat.  The above photo is shown with the sewn stripes placed on the horizontal, which will give you flat fringe--which you don't want.  One additional note, I looked at the Etsy pillow again, after I finished mine.  I think the seller folded her scraps when she sewed them, encouraging them to curl at the edges a little more.

I know all of these words, words, words makes it sound horribly complicated, but it really isn't.  If you decide to do this, just make a small sample square, or pin a few fabric strips on your base.   Or, take a close look at the next photo.

Is this perfect for a college dorm or what?!  Cute.  Cuddly.  Scrappy.  This might be a fun idea for baby or tot t-shirts, too--skip the quilt and just make one of these out of some favorite out-grown shirts.  (And--Eeeeeek, Yowza!--I promise, I'm going to get a new SD card!!!)


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