Sweatshirt quilt
 

My brother passed away in March. His partner asked me to make a quilt from my brother's sweatshirts and sweatpants. I have made tee shirt quilts but not sweatshirts. Do I stabilize them like I would a tee shirt? I use a light weight Pellon for tee shirts, will that work on sweatshirts? There was only a few actual shirts, it is mostly sweat pants with no print on them so I thought I would do a simple patchwork around the few print shirts. I will figure it out as I go. I hope someone has an idea about stabilizing them. Thanks in advance.

I would definitely use the featherweight Pellon to keep them from stretching....

I think I would make a rag style quilt with the sweatshirt fabric on top. Backing could be flannel, with the few actual shirts worked into either the back or the front. Cut squares, layer, sew an X through the layers, then sew together with raw edges exposed on the right side. No need for stabilizer or quilting after the quilt is put together.

I always said no because of the bulk of the sweatshirts. T-shirts quilts are quite heavy. You might want to use an old sweatshirt and see if your DSM can handle the bulk. As mentioned above, maybe a rag quilt made with larger squares would work better.

The fabric from sweatshirts does stretch, so I would use a very lightweight stabilizer....regardless of what pattern you make with the shirts.

Maybe a rag quilt with nothing on the back. Just cut the squares and sew them together with no backing. The s-shirts are warm and after so many will be heavy. Use a stitch I saw on Sewing With Nancy, she called a wobble stitch, a very narrow zig-zag stitch, just enough to zig-zag and about 2.5 length. This will make a stretch stitch. Good luck.

I don't think you need any stabilizer. The fabric is heavy enough, but it stretches one way more than the other. I would try to put the pieces together so that the stretchy side matches with a non-stretchy side. With a lot of plain squares, that would be no problem. That would also give interest to the look: as of nap going different ways.

When I put sweatshirts in a quilt, I backed them. This makes a nice warm quilt!

I just made a rag type quilt as others have mentioned. It was quick and easy. I did not use any stabilizer. Even tho that fabric is knit and can stretch, it is heavy enough to hold it's shape while sewing. I did lighten my foot pressure one setting. I didn't use a backing on mine but adding one would be no problem.

I also used a narrow zigzag stitch to give a little stretch to my seams since I didn't add a backing.