Have any of you made a T-Shirt quilt? The next door neighbor knows I quilt and wants me to make a quilt out of one of her sons T-Shirts from high school. He is in the marines and just coming home from overseas. I am very intimidated with working with stretchy t-shirt material and so afraid I will screw it up. Any help or ideas would be great! Thanks

Don't stress, you'll be fine! :-)

With all of us helping you know it will be great. LOL

You need to iron the t-shirt fabric onto a stabiliser before you cut it up. I used a very thin iron-on interfacing, you would have something similar over there. It holds the fabric firm so that when you cut your pieces out they don't distort or stretch.

You still need to be careful with your pieces and not stretch them.

Do you have a pattern in mind?

No I have no pattern in mind. She also ended up bringing over a quilt that her mother made her son when he was a child and wants me to incorporate it into the quilt as well. That quilt is just 5 inch blocks in blue and grey. Just the standard block pattern.

Will have to grab some stabilizer at the store when I go out. Does the stabilizer eventually wash away? haven't ever used a stabilizer except for when using the embroidering machine.

The one I used doesn't wash away, it was an interfacing. But it's very thin, like paper, so adds almost no bulk to the quilt.

The quilt she wants incorporated, can you dismantle some of the seams and use the blocks as a border to the shirt you have?

This is one of the ones I made...

Thank you BlueChicken I am going to run to Joanns tomorrow and get some interfacing and see how it turns out. Fingers crossed!

Be careful about the type of iron-on interfacing you buy. You want the thinnest and softest you can find. Buy small amounts and experiment on scrap t-shirts to make sure you like the result. You want the drape to remain as soft as possible. Some interfacings end up making the fabric quite stiff.

The iron-on interfacing I like to use is a tricot knit interfacing because it is soft, has some stretch, and leaves the fabric with a decent drape. I think places like JoAnn's carry it, but it is much less expensive purchased by the yard online from a drapery place. (I Googled to find it.)

There are books on making t-shirt quilts that contain helpful hints about interfacing, sashing, etc. Check Amazon for titles.