Design advice
 

Hello,
My friend has ask me to put together a t-shirt quilt for her, but this would be the first one I have tried. She wants it to be this style, with the irregular sizes and sashing. I have the interfacing, but there are 40+ designs between all the shirts, and I`m not sure what the best way would be to decide the layout. I have the measurements of all the designs and I uploaded pictures, but my computer freezes too much. Any advice on how to determine a good layout?

I would choose a dimension (width Or length) and keep all of them in that same dimension. All 12" wide, for example, but different lengths that can be sashed together to make a block of say 36" (plus sashing). If not, all your sashing will have to be custom cut to fit each smaller than "normal" block.

I remember seeing a tutorial for a real easy way to make the same size finished block from different sized original squares and different sized sashing. She was making a child's quilt but the principle should work for the t-shirt and stabilize it at the same time. Let me see if I can find it.

I found it https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=UGt6_pWo6zs

I have found that the easiest way to do the kind of layout you linked to is to set a common denominator for your t-shirt blocks. I usually go with 3 as my common denominator. Then you can cut, based on imprint sizes, any size that is evenly divisible by 3. which would give you 3", 6", 9", 12", 15" etc. Then choose a common size for your sashing or let your sashing be your "fill in" for getting odd sizes to fit. Get out the graph paper and start sketching. On this T-shirt quilt linked here: https://www.quiltingboard.com/pictur...t-t209647.html I started out that way but some of the imprints didn't play nicely with that size so I made it a shadow box layout and used my sashing (the light purple) as a background color and used it to fill in the gaps. The quilt you linked to appeared to me to have partial seams. I could easily pick out the blocks of imprint except the right side edge and top right edge appear to me to be constructed with partial seams.

Edited to add don't forget to add your seam allowances once you have decided on sizes.

Lisa Capen has a three part video series on a collage type t-shirt quilt. It is very informative. Link is below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UB-6D_qgIU

When I was designing mine most of the blocks were 12 1/2 inches but I also had several rectangular shaped ones. I laid them out on the bed after stabilizing and cutting them out and moved them around until I got what I wanted. I did sash around each square as I proggressed.

Graph paper is a good friend when figuring out what sizes to cut your blocks and how they will lay. Remember to add seam allowance and have a common denominator so everything will play nice together.

you don't say what size the desired quilt will be , but 40 shirts is quite a few! Like Feline said, the quilt you posted does end up with partial seams, so I'd suggest you do like she says and try to use dimensions that will allow you to make either equal size blocks in rows or columns. And definitely use scratch paper. I've made quite a few that are similar to what she is wanting--I usually measure all the t-shirt logos (add some space around each) and figure out what I have to work with. Then I use my outline of my quilt and place the blocks in it. Graph paper allows you to figure out the width/length of sashings too. Good luck, these can be a little tricky. If you have EQ7 or 8 (I'm not familiar with the earlier versions) you can use the unequal blocks layout,but don't add in color to the design or you lose the grid (I always make them 1") to figure out sashing sizes.