My T-Shirt Quilt

A family member asked if I could make a T-Shirt quilt for her from her high school days to take with her to college last summer.

I had never made one and knew it could be tricky working with knits.

She brought over around 12 T-Shirts and I washed them and ironed them.

Next I googled how to videos and found an excellent one explaining in details all the steps.

I cut out the sections to use.  It generated a lot of scraps.

I had to order the interfacing needed to stabilize the knitted pieces.

That took FOREVER due to COVID.

And luckily my niece’s heat press helped to reduce the time needed to press the interfacing to the pieces.  Ironing it would have taken forever and would not have been done as completely.

I followed the instructions from the video to mark the center lines of the pieces.

I cut all of the blocks (except for four) 13 inches by 13 inches.

The other four had larger designs on them so they became 16 inches by 16 inches.

I played around with the placement and once that was decided I started sewing the blocks and then rows together.

I decided to make a border around all the blocks alternating the knit colors.

In the meantime I ordered a knit backing fabric after my cousin selected the ones she liked.

Then it was sandwiched with the top, padding and backing.

That took several smoothing out the wrinkles to get it ready to quilt.

I tried to do free motion quilting but the quilt was so heavy to move around and I was very disappointed with the results.  So I picked out all the stitching and put my walking foot on.  First I stitched 1/4 foot on each side of the stitch lines to stabilize it.  Then with the walking foot I marked quilt lines for each of the blocks.

I made a machine embroidered label for the back too!

My cousin loved it!

But I did say it’s my first T-Shirt quilt and my last one.

LOL!