How To Make a T-SHIRT quilt!

HELLO! Ok, so if you are anything like me, you have TONS of t-shirts. CAMP shirts, sports shirts, club shirts, school shirts, SORORITY shirts, etc. Do you really wear all of them still? I bet not. A T-shirt quilt is a great way to still use those shirts (instead of sitting in a drawer forever) & it can definitely be a DIY project! I know many people who have paid to have them made (& they all look AMAZING!) but, of course I saw it as a fun project!

I started by finding all of the shirts I might want to use & picked out what size quilt I wanted to make. In this case, I am using the majority of my sorority shirts & making it King sized. I used rouhly 30 shirts (although I had at least 50 or so. . ha!) Then, I measured all of the usable space (including the design, as wide and as long as I could get without having a collar, sleeve, or hem in it) on the shirts. I made a list of the shirts and the maximum and minimum lengths and widths of usable space for each shirt.

This is the list of usable space options for each shirt. I highlighted the measurements that I decided to use in the quilt.

Next, I went in Paint on my computer to make a "sketch" design of the quilt. This is when I found a place for each piece in the design of the quilt. To make things easier, since I had so many varying styles and sizes of designs on the shirts, I made the pieces fit into columns and did not use and sashing in the middle design of the quilt.

This is the digital "sketch" design I made. Each t-shirt was numbered. some shirts got two numbers for front and back, but to cut out some confusion, I used an asterick to mark the second design from the same shirt. For example: 1(front) & 1*(back).

TIME TO CUT! Now, I cut out the maximum usable space on each shirt. Basically, I cut off the the collar, sleeves, bottom hem, and seperated the sides. 

I then numbered each piece and stacked them until I had cut each piece. To make the future sewing process easier & to prevent future streching of the quilt, I attached some fusible woven interfacing to back of each piece. This helped the t-shirt material to not stretch really at all.

After ironing on all of the interfacing, I cut the pieces into the right size. (Keep in mind to cut pieces with a little extra material on each side for sewing. For math purposes and convience, I added an extra 1" of material to each side, which proved to be much more than needed, but better safe than sorry. ha)

I laid all of the pieces out on the floor to see how well the fit together according to the "sketch" design.

This is where I saw if I cut the pieces a little wrong. luckily for me, when I miscut them, it made them bigger than they should be, so I was able to cut them to the right size.

I laid the finished strips on the bed to see how they looked. Sometimes just laying them out on the floor doesn't give good perspective for what it will really look like.

After finishing all of the strips, I laid them all out on the floor to see what order I wanted them. I switched some rows around so that it was more aesthetically appealing.

After attaching a couple rows together, I laid them on the bed again to see how well I did.

I continued this process until all of the front of the quilt was attached together. Next I laid the bottom fabric (a king size flat sheet with all of the edges cut off) down, laid the quilt batting down and cut it to fit, then laid down the front of the quilt. Then I used hand embroidery thread to make ties at the corners of each piece.

Then, I pinned the edging on & began to sew!

This is the finished project!

It is done! & It is BBEAUTIFUL! ha. There are definitely a few spots where I cut part of the design out or had to re-sew, but those little quirks are fine with me. Overall, this was a fun project that was not all that hard. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial & maybe I even inspired you to try to make one of your own.

                                                         Well, That's all folks!