Just like the title says. The boyfriend and I just went through our not insignificant collection of old effect and miscellaneous VT shirts that don't fit, are stained in places, or have just generally been retired from lack of wear, and the question we have now is: what do we do with these nostalgia nuggets?
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I still, to the dismay of my wife, wear my 08 hole-riddled orange effect shirt. Let it rip.
We still have the OG effect shirt from '03 that is mostly a rag but because it's still holding together that the shoulders and sides, it's been deemed fit to wear. It isn't, but we don't have the heart to toss it. The screen printing is mostly gone by this point too.
The one on the left is the rag she's talking about. Really glad they reused the design recently for the shirt on the right.
Your OG shirt makes me feel so much better about one of my Longwood shirts... I still have the very first shirt I got when I went on a tour before I was accepted at Longwood (got the shirt in fall of 98 started fall of 99). The shirt has a hole where it got eaten by a 3 ring binder and is slightly stretched out now, but it is not quite as bad as yours.
Occasionally I still sleep in the first Tech shirt that HokieEnginerd gave me when we started dating. That one is stretched out and faded but still in one piece.
How can you tell if it's the one on the left or the one on the right?
You can send those shirts off to a company that will make them into a blanket. Where each square of the blanket is the front or back of the shirts you send them. I don't know the specific places that do it but I'm sure I could find some via a google search. I've never done it myself, but it was a decently popular thing among people going off to college or whatever.
Seems like a good way to conserve some shirts that are past their wearability or don't fit anymore.
That's the current plan for these that "have shrunk too much to wear" as I'm calling it. Definitely not ever going to wear a random Orange effect shirt from 2007 that's a size too small. Would love to make a quilt out of them all.
My mom did this as a side hustle for a while when she became an empty nester. Then all of us started having kids so she's putting all her quilting time towards grandkid quilts.
EDIT: Showed her this thread. Apparently she's wrapping up grandkid quilts and would be open to doing this again. Flat rate per square foot (more if you want t-shirts on both sides- more piecing). She doesn't just back the t-shirts and sew them together. She picks a palette of fabrics to use as separators (kinda like this). Probably be more expensive than the stuff I've seen online, but
If you're interested, you can hit me up at hokie07me AT gmail.com and I can connect you to her. No way in hell I'm showing her how to set up a TKP account.
I'm going to get on a soapbox for a moment: as someone that is a seamstress (but not a quilter) I would expect something like the quilt you linked to to cost between $350 - $500, maybe even more. Anyone that thinks that's too much, GTFO. You're not just paying for extra materials, which aren't cheap, but also for the quilter's time. I personally tell others that they can't afford my hourly rate because I don't sewn for other people and quite frankly I think it's rude to assume I would be willing to take on additional projects, but that's me. Sorry for the rant, I just get annoyed when people think quilters or tailors charge "too much" when in fact they are providing skilled labor for their fee. /endrant
One of my best and long time Hokie friends is a quilter, and he's been doing it for years. He has a big quilting machine of some sort, but none of us has ever asked him for a custom job because of the obvious time and expertise required to do it right.
Is this how other serious quilters do it, with a machine? I mean, I always used to think quilts were sewn by little old ladies getting together with their friends and recycling baby clothes, while drinking tea.
They should make all mechanical engineering students do a semester of quilting. That way, maybe new grads would actually understand what tolerance stack up really is
As I said, I'm not a quilter, but I know that high-end quilting machines can cost upwards of $15,000. When I sew a garment, the seam allowance is usually 5/8 of an inch, so you have a little leeway with a seam if your cutting wasn't 100% perfect. With quilting, your seam allowance is more like 5mm or 1/4 of an inch, so your seams and cuts have to be VERY precise. Then, depending on the pattern you're following, you also have to line up your "blocks", if you have corners or sharp edges in the design, they have to be very exact or it will look wonky. Quilting is very fiddly and it's part of why I don't do it.
There are so many ways to do a quilt. Most everyone I know does machine quilting. There are some people out there that will do the piecework with a machine and then hand-quilt. Then there are some old school folks that do the piecing and the quilting by hand. So you can see how a handmade quilt can get pretty pricey. If anyone ever gifts you with a quilt they made themselves, know that it was 100% made with love.
So now you know more about quilting than you probably ever imagined you would know, all from a Virginia Tech sports fan site!
My wife and I just found out that we are inheriting her grandmothers quilting loom. 3'wide by 11' long.
That's awesome! I wouldn't have the space to set up something like that, which could be part of why machine quilting is so popular these days.
My aunt has a 16 foot long setup in her basement for the actual quilting part. And she just quilts as a hobby. This is what being an empty nester wife of a NASA engineer looks like I guess.
This is one she quilted after my mom did all the piecing by hand. That sucker knocked out 320,000 stitches in a single setup overnight.
This is like sewing machine porn. And the pattern your mom made is a work of art. She's a very talented lady. I'm going to save your contact info for when we are in a position to get our shirts made into a quilt because that's what we've both decided we want to do with them eventually, but we have to recover from a hefty unexpected plumbing bill first. The previous owners of my home have struck again. Even the plumber we called out was scratching his head, but that's not a topic for this thread.
This is an amazing rig. My MIL and wife come from a family of quilters, all the big life events are commemorated with a quilt - graduation, wedding, baby, etc. Plus they do some just because they like the designs. Typically they sew the pattern and they 'Tie' them. For fancier or more finished projects they will send them off to to someone with the big arm/pattern sewing machines like you've got here.
Thanks, Flippin. I know my friend was really into it for a good while. His mom lived with him for a while when she aged, and she was a big quilter as well. His loom took up a large portion of a pretty big room. It was all Greek to me, but it was impressive, and his quilts were first class. No doubt about the time and care it takes.
My mom was an expert crocheter. I remember at one charity auction she had crocheted two afghans - crib-sized - to give to the auction. Both went for multiple hundred dollars. You ain't kidding when you say that good quality stuff like that should fetch a high price, and in my family's experience it certainly does. The organization that held the auction was quite happy with my mom.
We did this for my sister for Xmas, she had a bunch of triathlon t-shirts that we put together, she loved it.
Our daughter and her BFF get together every couple of years and do this.
Also planning to do this. My fiance has a place she loves, I'll post it here when she gives me the name.
I've had this same thought. I have more Hokie shirts than I know what to do with and would rather not just give them away. Definitely want to send them off to get a quilt made.
Usually when mine have lived their life they just float away in the breeze like dandelions.
While you're still wearing them? Do they just disintegrate off of your body and float away?
Most of mine are used for work out apparel and a few have had the sleeves cut out. I don't think I can throw them away.
Found this sealed away while going through my old shirts and this is still my favorite basketball shirt. It's retired from use for obvious reasons. I wont even wear this for luck for a big game.
You oughta frame this bad boy...
Don't fit - give to the old lady and tell her it's a cute dress
Stains - adds character, still wear
Lack of wear -
Between the 2 of us, we have 2 drawers stuffed to the brim with Tech shirts. The rest have to be stored away because we don't have the closet space to hang them. So that's why they aren't getting worn. Gotta love older homes that don't have modern walk-in closets with endless amounts of space.
I have a fair collection of Tech shirts too and I didn't even go there! Between my Longwood shirts and my Tech shirts, I could probably wear a different shirt every day for a month.
I have two T-shirt drawers myself, and that isn't enough space for all of them on the rare occasion we're actually on top of the laundry. About 2/3 of my shirts are maroon and/or orange. I have only completely worn out a handful of shirts in my day, and most of them were because they were low-quality to begin with, which doesn't usually apply to my VT shirts.
I still have the T I wore to the '95 Sugar Bowl. Wore it to every game that season and likely had it from the season before. I save it for game day wear only, launder as little as possible, and hang it on a hanger the rest of the year. It doesn't look new, but it still hasn't got any holes in it. They built them to last in the olden days! I finally had to toss a V Pi T from the 80s last year. Tried to put it on after a decade in a drawer and it literally shredded as I pulled it on. Otherwise, they go from daily wear to occasional wear, to fishing shirt, to yard work shirt, to rag bag to chuck it.
What do I do with the box of extra Buzzketball t-shirt in my car hole? 😂
Unfortunately, this GIF is broadly applicable to TKP's business at-large.
I still wear mine, but there is a tinge of sadness knowing I should have just gotten a basketball shirt that didn't so heavily play on the coaches name. One of my favorite shirts was an ACC football champion shirt that I just added years to when we kept winning the ACC. Other favorite would be the free shirt from ladies volleyball that the team signed after a game back in 04.
+1,000 legs for use of "car hole".
agreed
Garage rags. I know somebody who ended up with three pallet loads of former fox ridge shirts that said "For a good time call" and then listed the management number.
Make them into dog toys
Have you tried selling them to Tx A&M fans? The maroon isn't drastically different and there isn't any real reference to VT on them, right? They can just pretend like the orange is for the color of the basketball.
Not a bad idea. I was thinking I'll probably give them away at a tailgate at some point.
How many are there, what sizes are they, how much you want for them
Let me get back to you on this. Off the top of my head, I probably have about 30 of them.
Good will, same with all the other old clothes my kids mom steals from my drawer or closet since I do not throw away clothes willingly unless they are falling off of me from all the holes, tears, etc...
Joe likes to take his, wrap them around a large stick, douse them in kerosene, set a match to them, and torch the COVID threads.
RIP COVID threads. You were...um...informative...
...at times.
You got the inflammatory part absolutely right.