I met with a new customer a couple months ago that provided me with a challenge. I was given 7 shirts and asked to make a t-shirt quilt for his wife. When asked what her style/colors were…I was given modern and neutral. Normally a queen size quilt takes 25-30 shirts, if arranged in a standard t-shirt quilt pattern. How was I going to fill in all that extra space?
I began my pattern hunt…google “modern quilt pattern”. I found a couple I liked and one specifically that I decided to modify to make it work. I didn’t have any graph paper on hand (it was needed to sketch it out to get fabric quantity needed)…so again I googled “1/8” graph paper, found it and printed it out. It worked perfectly. Google is a fantastic tool. I then hit up the local quilt shop to find my fabrics. Now if you have ever made a t-shirt quilt, you know that you are working with lots of colors and to find something that works well with all of them can be a challenge in and of itself. In this set I had pink, maroon, gold, green, black and brown shirts to work with and I had to stay in the neutral colors.
This is what I ended up with.
It finished at a long queen, more like a queen in width and king in length. 
The pattern at first looked like it would be a pain to put together, but it went very smoothly. I labeled my strip lengths as I cut them out. Then marked out my rows on the sketch and pulled each needed piece as I was working on that row. 
As for the quilting, the peach was filled with a swirl design from edge to edge. The shirts were stippled around the printed design to highlight the shirt. The cream was left empty to create another dimension.
I am pleased with how it all turned out. Sometimes there is a little bit of trepidation, did I choose the right fabrics, layout, quilting fabric, thread…and I definitely second guessed myself a couple times on this one, but the fear proved unfounded. The quilt finished beautifully and is now home with it’s owner.