Need suggestions for quilting a T-Shirt Quilt
 

I made a T-shirt quilt for my dd from her basketball t-shirts. She does NOT want it tied. I'll try to post a picture so you can see what it looks like.
Thanks.

What Tartan said! :)

Great t-shirt quilt! Stitching over the t-shirts can be challenging. I, too, would stitch in the sashing area, probably echoeing the seams. Then, if your machine has a bar tack or similar stitch, I would bar tack where the ties would have been. The machine won't have problems with stitching in one place. Good luck.

I have done several tshirt quilts and the batting will determine how close the quilting must be. If you use a batting that has 4 to 6 inch quilting, then you will need to quilt inside the tshirt pieces. When I quilted mine, I did a grid of diagonal lines about 4 inches apart. Since most of tees were white, I used white thread. I also used the walking foot to go over the rubbery parts of the tees. I tried fmq, but with limited success due to thread breakage in the logo areas....no problem with straightline quilting. The white thread blends right in, you just don't notice it in the tees either.

Great job on the quilt. I have one to make that I have been avoiding. I may have to steal your ideas just to get started.

For the quilting, I love W&N because you have a 10" quilting area. That's a very big area to leave open. (I don't usually leave that much open, but it's oh, so nice to know I can.) Then I would outline the blocks (just to stabilize everything), do something in the sashings, then a close pebbling or meandering or wiggly line in the tee shirt areas themselves, making every effort not to go over the writings. Just some straight lines in & back out would work in some of the blocks. Making like sideways U's. Or a loopy that crosses over each other on the way in or out. Write her name out in the area under Oklahoma, and any other info that you'd love for her to see every time she uses the quilt. On that Sooner tee, you could do an echo quilting in each corner to emphasis the central design. I'd look at each quilt block to see what I wanted to do.

I haven't tried the idea of drawing the design out on a clear paper, think dry cleaner bags, or some type of rolled wrap, but that would probably work very well to make up unique designs for all these blocks. I can't wait to see how the quilt after you get the quilting done and bound. It's really going to be something else!!!

Just curious....what did you back the tee's with to stabilize them for the quilt?

I agree with Tartan. Outline everything you can. Don't stitch thru any of the vinyl paint on the shirts. A T-shirt quilt is a little to heavy to tie. If you are quilting it on a DSM, be sure to have good support around you because a T-shirt quilt is very heavy Good Luck !!