I have always wanted to have a T-Shirt quilt made out of my old t-shirts. Since I am graduating on Saturday I thought, "hey! this could be an excellent graduation gift!" So I started to look all over the internet for companies that make them. Let me tell you -- there are a LOT. And what's worse, they start at close to $200 for a lap-size quilt! I thought to myself that I could make one cheaper, easier, and faster than any of these companies.
My wonderful mother-in-law (weird to say!) quilts and let me borrow some of her tools! I could've never done it without them!
Here is an abbreviated step-by-step process. I kinda made it up as I went along. If you want to make one yourself, let me know and I can give you more details.
*SIDE NOTE: I have never taken professional sewing classes or anything. Even though I have made clothes and blankets before, I always just go to the internet and figure it out on my own.
Step 1: Collect t-shirts and figure out which sides you are going to use. Obviously, the more shirts the larger the quilt.
Step 2: Cut shirts to squares. Leave as much extra as possible because you will constantly be trimming and squaring up the shirts.
Step 3: Figure out how you want to lay out your quilt.
Step 4: Back your shirts with fusible interfacing. This is really important. Since t-shirts are a jersey material they will stretch and pull and pucker. They need to be backed and sturdy before you can start sewing.
Step 5: Cut strips of fabric to run between your shirts. I used a twin size flat sheet from Walmart (JoAnns is too far from us and in all honesty I think a single sheet was cheeper than buying fabric). Sew these to the shirts on the bottom and top. Press seams open.
Step 6: Sew these together in the layout you want. Here is an example:
Step 7: I had three columns and then I used longs strips to sew each column together, like so:
Step 8: Add boarders until your heart is content.
Step 9: Bind together (you're going to have to YouTube that one) and you got yourself a quilt!
Simple, huh? Not really. I just dumbed down the quilt-making recipe a TON. There is a lot of math involved... and I am not a math person. And it took a LONG time. There is also a ton of ironing involved; I guess this all depends on how OCD one is. I have seen a few tutorials on the internet but I still had to guess on a lot of the quilt.
But it is wonderful. I should start making them for $200 a pop!
-Sara
