Patchwork Plaid Shower Curtain

In my last post, I talked about how the boyfriend had moved to his new apartment and was in dire need of just about everything. One of the things that made it on the list was a shower curtain. When I asked him what he wanted his bathroom to feel like, he said "AMERICA". I almost wish I was kidding, but let's be serious, that's a great answer.
So I looked around for some not-over-the-top patriotic shower curtains and came up with nothing until I randomly stumbled across PB Teen's Regatta shower curtain:

He instantly loved it, but asked me if I could sew it for him instead.

We played around with the proportions of the patches a little bit and came up with this plan:

A standard shower curtain is 72" by 72". We decided on 6 columns, each 12" wide made up of patches that were either 6", 12" or 18" high, varied in their placement so the columns would be 72" long.

We went to Goodwill for the fabric. I decided we should stick with standard shirts for continuity instead of adding in flannel or other heavier weight shirts. Cameron helped me choose 12 men's old plaid shirts in shades of red, white and blue in various plaid patterns. We tried to choose large or XL shirts for the most fabric, but we ended up with a few smaller shirts to get a particular pattern we liked.

 

To allow for sewing seams, I cut the 6"x12" pieces at 7"x13", the 12"x12"s at 13"x13" and the 18"x12" at 19"x13". That gave me half an inch on each edge.

I used the backs of the shirts to get the largest 19"x13" pieces and then the fronts and sleeves were cut to make the 13"x13" and 7'x13" pieces.

We spent quite a bit of time one night laying out the final pattern. We wanted to make sure the patterns and colors were spread out. While I was cutting out the shirts, I cut a few extra of each size so that we would have more options during this stage.

To sew the curtain together, I sewed the individual columns first and then sewed the columns together to create the whole curtain.
Once that was complete, I sewed the whole piece to a fabric curtain liner for both extra stability and the ease of already having the holes for the hooks at the top. It was at this stage that I hemmed the curtain.

Cameron loves the final curtain and so do I. If the shirt pieces happened to include plackets, buttons or pockets, I left them on. They add a lot of interest to the final piece and show that it was sewn from shirts. And the use of the curtain liner helps the top look more finished than buttonholes would have. Great success.