My Shirts, My Process

After photographing each shirt,

then measuring the design size and cropping the photos accordingly (these both have a 5"x8" design, so they're resized to 500x800 pixels),

I was left with 22 virtual blocks to juggle into some sort of submission.

At first I symmetrically "staged" the largest designs on my virtual wall, then tried filling in the spaces with the smaller designs. It soon became clear: the random approach was the fastest track to insanity.

I looked at things from a different angle: why not group the designs by widths, then see if similar-length columns could be constructed?

My worksheet as a result, showing multiple blocks in widths of 8", 9", 10-11-12-13":

Because I had measured the minimum design area, I knew I could flesh out any of them by an inch or more, so that's what the circles and arrows (and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was) indicate: smaller designs that could be cut larger and moved to another column.

After all the dust settled, I had four columns 33" long from designs 10", 11", 12", and 13" wide. The 7"x14" design will get used on the back, and 3 T-shirts were returned, unscathed, to their drawer (I was happy to spare them, as they're still fun to wear. The "I in team" shirt--above--was one of them).

This is the first prototype--a proof of concept if you will--before thoughts of adding sashing had occurred to me:

I liked the Dr. Seuss shirt, but the colors weren't quite right, so obscured the humor:
One-fifth, two-fifth, red-fifth...light-purple-fifth?

Just to match one column of this to the worksheet: the pink "glasses" shirt started out as 12"x9". If cut an inch wider, it can be moved to the 13" column (far right). The keyboard "yesterday" shirt has a minimum design size of 11"x12", but if cut two inches wider it too can be moved to the 13" column, bringing the sum of those block lengths (blue "cat knows" = 8", black/green quote = 4") (8"+4"+9"+12") to 33".

Now, for someone of my height (I'm taller than the average bear), 46"x33" are skimpy dimensions. My next step is to determine what I'd like the final size to be, then figure out the sizes of sashings to go between each block and column. Obviously, a column with 6 blocks (the left one) will have narrower sashes than one with only three (the third column). Or, those columns with fewer designs can have their designs cut longer, so all the sashings on the top can be the same size. At this point it's simply a matter of aesthetics and math.

The fun of finding the sashing comes next!