My friend and customer, Linda, sent me two quilt tops made from T-shirts to longarm for her. Her friend asked her to make them as a gift for an athletic daughter. In addition to giving permission to share them on the blog, Linda wrote her thoughts and tips about using T-shirts to make quilts.
The idea book Linda used was T-shirt Quilts Made Easy by Martha Deleonardis. “In her book, Martha describes the Grid Method quilts. All of my T-shirts had 12 inch prints. After stabilizing the T-shirts with a non-woven fusible interfacing (I used Pellon 911FW) so the T-shirts would not stretch when sewn, I cut each T-shirt print to 12.5 inches square. I used the grid size of 4 inches for the template of the quilt design and surrounded each T-shirt with 4 inch (4.5 unfinished) squares of beautiful purple/blue batik fabric. I collected approximately 24 different batiks for this project. I wanted to infuse a different size print into the quilt design since just having 12 inch prints was rather boring. I decided to cut out the small logos that some of the T-shirts had. I cut them to 4.5 inches square and wanted to sew 3 together vertically to sew in between each 12″ T-shirt square. Since I did not have enough small logos, I inserted a baseball print in the middle of each one. As a result, this created a much more interesting T-shirt quilt design.”
Linda created a second T-shirt quilt using the Twistin’ Fun method as explained in Martha’s book. Tilting the blocks adds visual interest to the quilt, don’t you think? Linda embroidered a square with the quilt recipient’s name and graduation details. (Click on the picture to zoom in.) Both of these T-shirt quilts will call up fun memories for years to come!
Have you made a T-shirt quilt, or is there one on your quilting horizon?
abyquilts 
There is a t-shirt quilt or five in my future. I have a large stack of my husband’s t-shirts siitting in my sewing corner. I have purchased the stabilizer. Now need to check out this idea book!!! And I foresee at least 4 more t-shirt quilts in my future for my boys as well!
Interesting, my Mother made quilts from old jean material.
Sent from my Galaxy Tab® A
I have made a few. Definitely not my favorite type to make because of the prep work involved but I’ve learned to have the t-shirt owner come spend a few afternoons with me doing the prep work together. Most of them don’t sew but they can fuse interfacing and we have fun time of fellowship.
Having a friend help with cutting the shirts apart and applying the interfacing definitely moves the project along more quickly!
I did make one this past year for my son’s best friend graduation gift. He was very active in marching band. Unfortunately he had some 16 in prints and 14 inch prints…so didn’t know what to do. But it turned out wonderful and scrappy and he loved it. Now to get it quilted…
I have only made one and the logo’s were all different sizes. I also added in some special blocks, and printed on fabric for that. I wrote extensively about this quilt in 2014. My blog post with the wrap up is here – https://stitchinggrandma.wordpress.com/2014/04/18/t-shirt-memory-quilt-delivered/
Thanks for including a link to your T-shirt quilt project!
Please share more about quilting a tshirt quilt. Looks like an all over design. No problems going over design. Working on one now and cant decide on sashing color. Don’t want thread to stand out on tshirts if I choose a dark sashing.
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