How To Make A Tee Shirt Quilt

Like everybody else, a corner of your wardrobe must be filled with tee-shirts you wore at one point of time in the past, but not anymore. There might also be t-shirts that you bought, but never felt like wearing. Now it is time to use all of them to make a beautiful quilt. The size of the quilt will depend upon the availability of t-shirts. In other words, the more t-shirts you have, the bigger quilt you would be able to make. Now, think no more! Take out all the unused tee-shirts, count their number and then take a separate measurement of each of them. Read on to get more instructionson how to make a tee-shirt quilt.

Making A T-shirt Quit

Supplies Needed

Tee-shirts
Interfacing, fusible or woven
Woven Cotton Fabrics (for interlocking and bordering)
Fabric (for backing and batting)
Logos (optional)
Designer Cutouts (optional)
Pins
Scissors

Instructions

Basic Preparation

Proceed with the quilt making idea only if you have a minimum of four t-shirts. The maximum number of t-shirts that you can have is thirty six.
For backing, you can use either a plain cotton fabric or extra tee-shirts, if you haven any.
Now, wash all the t-shirts and dry them. This way, if any of them has a shrinking tendency, you will not be bothered by it late on.
Iron the t-shirts to make them look fresh and new.

Designing

Make a layout of the design of the quilt, first on a paper, with all basic details marked out.
Now, start cutting your t-shirt. Remove the sleeves, neck piece and take out a neat square or rectangle pieces, with about 1/2 inch seam allowance.
Cut the Interfacing, about 2 inches larger than the size of your unsewn blocks, so that the seams are sturdier.
Carefully cut out the designer part of the t-shirt, so that it doesn't look tampered with, when attached to the quilt.

Arranging & Sewing

When you are done with cutting, try the arrangement scheme. Keep all same-sized t-shirt blocks together and keep the smaller ones in front, for current use.
Now, as per the arrangement in the layout, start placing and pinning the blocks on a temporary dash board, on the floor.
Take the smaller blocks and sew them together, to make it up to the size of the required block in your layout.
Once you are done with the smaller blocks, start sewing all the blocks in rows or columns, simultaneously inserting the sashing pieces.
Now assemble all of them and add borders.

Finishing

Once you are done with the stitching part, it's time for giving the final look to the quilt.
Making sure that the batting and backing are a little larger than the face of the quilt, layer them on a large surface.
Now, arrange the batting, the backing face up and the quilt top face down.
Pin through the three layers from all the sides on the outside edge of the quilt top.
Sew the three sides properly, only leaving an opening of about 1/3 of the fourth side, that too in the middle.
Now, trim the batting close to the seam. However, remember not to trim the fabrics.
Turn the whole quilt right side out, to see what actually you have made.
Sew the opening you left on one side and gradually tie close every 4-5 inches of the quilt.
Your colorful quilt is ready!

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