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:
- 8 - 16 tee shirts
- fabrics of varied colors, I used 10 different fabrics (8 fat quarters and 2 fabrics measuring 1/2 yd).
- 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.
- 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!
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