The Black T-Shirt Quilt...almost!

This quilt has been about 12 years in the making....
meaning I've waited that long to start getting my hands on the black T-shirts!
When my son finally gave them to me last year, he said he did NOT want me to make this quilt...but I did use some to make a shower curtain he wanted.
Here is the start of the quilt with the remaining shirts:

I have been teaching a T-Shirt Quilt class for many years, so naturally the first thing I did was throw all the guidelines out the window and leap into the project.
Obviously, no good could come of that.
There is nothing worse than thinking you are out smarting yourself!

I chose the four shirts for the corners and one for the center , and then just plunged in without laying them out to see what I really had to work with.
I ended up one shirt short, and to try to fix that I eventually ended up taking rows apart (Oh, no! Reverse sewing!) and rebuilding them.
But did I ever go back and fix the original mistake, the "not laying out" part?
Of couse not, I just kept building the rows as they came along, but narrower.

This is actually the center portion of the quilt. I don't like a T-shirt Quilt that looks like rows of blocks, and it's more fun to have them off-set.....you don't have to sacrifice any of the art work, even the small parts from an arm.
(I do the meaning of all the shirts...does anybody else out there know what the ZERO shirt refers to?)

The quilt has ended up being really long and narrow (something like 49" x 80")....so far!

Well, I have a plan for making it a tad bit wider, and other than that...I am just not going to do any more worrying about it!

IMPORTANT RULE: Quilts are whatever size they turn out to be. They don't have to be some particular size.
If you want something to be a particular size, I'd suggest designing it from the outside in...otherwise, just let your quilts be the size they end up!

The local quilt shop is having a great end-of-the -month 25% off sale, so I'll be in there tomorrow to get some more red & black fabrics to finish up the borders. Then I will know the real final size and can fill out the entry form for QuiltFest in September! I wish they had a prize for quilts that follow the theme...this year is "Recycling the Past"!
And for those readers who are quite astute at forseeing trouble ahead...yes indeed, I am facing another giant quilting project of black-on-black!

Still, I am looking forward to this year's entry in my personal series of "quilts intended to make people laugh".
And if there's time, Cherry-Cherry & I are planning another one!

Meanwhile, I have designed and sewn a very different sort of Mystery Quilt for the Seaside Piecemakers in Satellite Beach. It turned out so big, I decided to make it a two-sided quilt...so if anyone from down that way is reading this, the description says it's reversible, but it is NOT that quilt-as-you-go, batting-buddy, square-by-square turn-the-back-to-the-front style that's going around the state right now!
More on that later.

A note for Shayla's fans:

She's doing a great job of learning to be a housecat, and now spends as much time on top of the futon as behind it. She has not been behind the bathtub for a long time, since she discovered my studio and office.
We both really like that Jane Sassaman fabric, which is really the back of that quilt. The front is a 9-patch, but I quilted it from the back to follow the fern shapes.