I've made a few, some with cotton fabric on the front and back, and some with flannel and some with tee shirts. It works any way, but tee shirts and flannel will fray better. At a minimum I would put flannel in the middle -- and it's cheaper than batting and you can get some real bargains on it. The pattern of the fabric doesn't matter as it will fray, but the colors do matter. The most important thing is to buy some spring loaded scissors for the snipping. Your hands will be tired! You want your seams to be 1/2 inch instead of the normal 1/4 inch...and the bigger the pieces of fabric the easier on you. My tee shirt quilts are 12" blocks and my cotton fabric quilt (shamrocks) were 6". I think for cotton fabric the 12" might be too big but the 6" is small and involves a lot of cutting -- I would hit something in the middle. Have fun !!