How do you piece a tshirt quilt of different sized blocks???
 

I'm stumped! I'm making a quilt for my grandson from his lacrosse penneys, jerseys, t-shirts, etc. The pieces from each of the shirts are all different sizes, so it won't work to have traditional rows and columns. I've looked on line and seen tons of these kind of quilts. In many of them I can see they added to the main pieces until they actually did have even rows or columns or built them into sub blocks that would fit together. However, I can't figure how they pieced some of them. Below is a link to one I couldn't figure out. Scroll down a ways to see the quilt. Can anyone explain how it's done? Thanks.

http://justblenda.blogspot.com/2010/...need-pins.html

I cut shorts in any number that was divisible by 3 (plus 1/2 inch seam allowance. For example, I would cut a shirt 9 1/2 by 6 1/2 and another 12 1/2 by 12 1/2 and another 3 1/2 by 12 1/2 etc. I cut a ton of shirts based on the size of the shirt design. Then I moved them around until they fit together. I will see if i can find a pix.

Great idea! Thanks. I notice that you managed to keep each block (or multiple blocks) in each column the same width. I don't know if I can finesse that. But I'll try! I like your quilt, too!

I added fabric to each T-shirt until they were the same width and then sewed columns. The shirts are all from bicycle events, so I used a bicycle print for the sashing. This is the front and the back.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]407037[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]407038[/ATTACH]

You could arrange the shirts the way you want them and any gaps just put in fabric to fit. You could print his name, name of school, year or event, etc. on the strips of fabric.

If the blocks aren't uniform in size, maybe using fabric from the backs of the t-shirts to create a border.... then they could be however big you want.

Hey, I see a few from Colorado, where I live! I have been thinking about that. On many of the shirts there is quite a bit of fabric left I could use. I've also got a few pair of the wild lacrosse shorts that I could use. I really love the bike material you used in the sashing. Like you did, I plan on piecing both the back and front. I'll use his numbers on the back. Thanks for the tip!

There are several ideas for layouts on this site. I particularly like the wonky one.


http://quiltersdiary.com/design-a-be...t-shirt-quilt/

I did one (still a UFO) for my daughter... will try to find the link I used. You measured them all, then drew them on graph paper and rearranged until you liked it. I have found that it used a lot of "short seams" that were more challenging to sew together (there weren't a lot of long straight seams) but I liked that it used "frames" to make it cohesive

Some are assembled using a partial seam. Which means you sew only part of the seam between two units until you can attach another unit to make the seam even. Here is one of many tutes I found by googling "Partial seam in quilting"
http://piecebynumber.com/partial_seams.htm

Another technique is using sashing to form fill pieces like I did on this quilt. I used a shadowbox layout so I could have varying sizes of sashing and fill pieces then I assembled the quilt in quadrants.

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how did you sew the blocks together when the corners don't match?

How was it to have tee shirt graphics on both sides? How did you quilt it? I want to make a double sided tee shirt quilt but don't want to stitch over the graphics.

pgreeno, have you made a t-shirt quilt before?? I have made of a half a dozen and they tend to be very heavy and with the back being also make from t-shirts, you are talking about twice the weight. I don't see how you could line the back up with the same size shirt without sewing thru some of the graphics on the bottom unless you did something like a QAYG. Sorry, just my opinion. I quilted all of them on my older Bernina.

This method assumes that the pieces were cut in increments of 4 inches (plus seam allowances). This is from the Too Cool TShirt method. This is the one that I have used for all the quilts that I have made. You cut the pieces in these increments so that they will all (eventually fit together). You may have to do partial seaming to put all the units together.l

Hello pgreeno,

I search the web to get ideas how to piece this quilt. Previous posts have described the two main ways: Cut all blocks with measurements all divisible by the same number. Like all dimensions are divisible by 4 so everything is 4, 8, 12, 16, etc. Pad each block to fill in any open spacing, like sashing but not always the same width and height. I couldn't use these because my grandson didn't want any sashing or fabric except the shirts and because some of the shirts were so little, I couldn't even always cut blocks that were divisible by 1. So what I did was that a photo of each shirt and upload it to my computer. Then I measured each logo. I cropped the photo down to the logo and resized it to 50% of the actual size. For example, if the logo was 6.5" x 8 inches on the shirt, I would crop the photo to where it had only the logo. Then I would resize it to be 3.75x 4. The advantage to using cropped photos that are sized proportionally to each other is that you can "uncrop" to fill in spaces. Then I just played around to get them arranged so they fit and I like them. I only ended up with two small spaces. I filled these with a crossed stitch piece that said Sally (long story) and an embroidered US flag with lax sticks as the stripes that I found on T shirts on the web. It took only one partial seam. Partial seams aren't difficult. There are lots of tutorials and videos on the web. I used this one: http://www.jinnybeyer.com/quilting-w...5A3116BD5790D1.

I've attach a couple of documents I created that show what I have discussed above and show the assembly steps. I hope this helps. Please don't hesitate to ask for clarification if I didn't explain something well enough.

Bragging grandmother alert!!! My grandson is a very good lacrosse player and has played on some of the top club teams in the country over the years. He verbally committed to DI Air Force Academy in November of his sophomore year in high school. I am very, very proud of him and love to watch him play. I live is south Denver, so I'll be able to watch him play all through his college years as well!

Forgot to mention I didn't put the numbers on the back. I felt like one poster stated that it would be too heavy. Another quilt for another day I guess. Also I had it quilted by Happy Crafters. They are very inexpensive compared to what I have paid in the past, and I was very happy with their work. They use a large stipple on T shirt quilts and avoid piercing any logos in order to avoid the logos coming off.

Thank you so much lasgrandma. You have put alot of time and effort to help us out!

I made a huge biker quilt for someone. I ironed stabilizer on the back of the shirts I was going to use, and then I trimmed them up. I had a lot of flannel fat quarters in men's shirt colors. So no mater the size of the t-shirt piece, the squares were all the same. It was king size and very nice. I will try to find a picture of it for you to see soon.

I made a huge biker quilt for someone. I ironed stabilizer on the back of the shirts I was going to use, and then I trimmed them up. I had a lot of flannel fat quarters in men's shirt colors. So no mater the size of the t-shirt piece, the squares were all the same. It was king size and very nice. I will try to find a picture of it for you to see soon. I don't think you could make a double sided t-shirt quilt and not quilt over the emblems, because of different sizes on the back and front. I did just large meandering, and it worked very well, and it made the t-shirt material even more stable. I even used the emblems from the pockets.

Like another poster I picked blocks that were divisible (in my case by 4) and cut the TShirts down into 4.5, 8.5 and 12.5 inch blocks. This meant I could create a complete block sized at 12.5 inches. In some cases I also cut some rectangles eg 4.5 x 8.5.

I was working with baby clothes so needed something really flexible

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g4...1.jpg~original

I just finished my first t-shirt quilt. I measured each logo (adding 1/2" for seams). I layed it out using a computer program (Sketchup) to which I could add color. I used tshirt fabric to fill in the holes between the logos. The border is made of the same fabrics. I also turned the blocks different directions. The back is flannel.
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