Do I HAVE TO...?
 

I have made 5 memory quilts of shirts that belonged to my deceased cousin. There were so many t-shirts that I refused to throw away and lots of scraps, so I made LOTS of string blocks. I STILL had lots of t-shirt parts left over so I cut them into 6 1/2" squares. I appliqued hearts on some of the squares, but I have over 100 squares to deal with. Do I HAVE to put some kind of backing on the squares before sewing them together? Since they will be interspersed with the string blocks, won't that provide enough stability to make a lap quilt? I don't know if I can afford the backing for all the squares! :)

Thanks for any and all advice.

I would think it would be difficult to sew the jersey knit to a woven cotton without a backing on the knits. The knits are going stretch when you sew them.

I suppose you could use paper then tear it off.

Or ... put them all on one piece of iron on backing, then use your rotary cutter to cut them all at once.

You really need a stabilizer. Otherwise the t-shirt fabric will stretch and swarm on you like crazy.

Do you have old jeans? You could do something like this. Then you wouldn't have to put anything behind but a scrap of batting. These make a great memory quilt.

that's a great idea

This is cool. Very nice quilt.

Off the top of my head, I would say you need stabilizer. You might be able to get away without if you use regular cotton quilting fabric as sashing to control the edges of the blocks. However, since it sounds like you have extra, why not piece a small sample without it & quilt it and see how it goes.

I like the jeans idea. What about the wash out stabilizer?

Just newspaper?

Contrary to popular belief you do NOT have to put stabilizer on the back of T-shirts to use in a T-shirt quilt. I have made numerous T-shirt quilts and have only put stabilizer on shirts that were very flimsy or that were the open mesh. Just treat the t-shirt squares gently.