T Shirt Quilt Tutorial

Tee Shirt Quilt 

A friend at work wanted my mom to make her a tee shirt quilt and gave her these tees.  Unfortunately, mom never got a chance to complete it before passing away in July.  I knew I had to finish it for her.  Tee shirt quilts are my least favorite quilts and I knew if I was going to do it, it had to be interesting or I would be miserable making it.  I decided to use the colors of the tee shirts, see below.  I bought bright primary colors to compliment the tees.  Below is a tutorial if any of you happen to have a bunch of tees you have saved and are ready to do something with them.  Hope you enjoy the tutorial, let me know if you have any questions!  

~~~Stephanie~~~

T Shirt Quilt Tutorial 

Supplies:

1. 8 - 16 tee shirts 
2. fabrics of varied colors, I used 10 different fabrics (8 fat quarters and 2 fabrics measuring 1/2 yd).
3. Pellon 821 Quilter's Grid On Point or Pellon 820 Quilter's Grid or any type of one sided iron-on interfacing, thin or light weight.  
4. thread to match your fabric, I used yellow, blue, red and white (white in my bobbin)

Pellon 821 Quilter's Grid On Point

OR 

Pellon 820 Quilter's Grid

is what I used to back the tee shirts, it worked great!

Directions:

• Cut out the designs from the tee shirts that you want to use in the quilt.  I cut out each design roughly and left as much fabric around the design as possible.  I used designs from the front and back of the tee shirt and from the pockets.   

• Trim the designs down leaving about 2 inches around each design using a rotary cutter and ruler.  You will notice that the fabric rolls.  This is why you have to put a stabilizer onto the back of the tee shirt designs that you want to include into the quilt.  

• Cut a piece of Pellon just smaller than the tee shirt design.

• Iron the Pellon onto the back of your designs using a pressing cloth.  I use a piece of an old sheet.  

• Trim the tee shirts down to the size you want them, leaving ample room around for seam allowances.  I only cut off enough to make the similar sizes.  All the small ones I cut to the same width and the larger ones I cut them down to 2 inches around the design on all sides.  

• Plan your design.  I played around with them before settling on the final layout.  
• I cut strips of fabric to go around all the big squares.  Each strip was cut 3.5 inches wide.  
• I then sewed the strips around the big squares and then layed on the design wall to see how they would look.  
• I then pieced the squares together by centering the squares and trimming off any extra strips that were bigger than the rest.  
• In the center square, I decided to put all the small designs together.  

• Quilt it anyway you like.  I did a simple stitch in the ditch to protect the tee shirts.  I didn't want any quilting to interfere with the words on the tee shirts.  

• I used all the left over fabric and pieced it to make the back and the binding.  

 the finished quilt 

 I love a folded quilt!