I recently paid to have a T-Shirt quilt quilted by a local long-arm quilter. She did not quilt over the emblems on the shirts, citing that they were likely to break the needle as they had a thick coating. These t-shirts were old, well worn, and well washed and were soft. As a result, there is no quilting on the back either, which looks weird, and the front of the shirts are loose, do not lie flat (in fact they look "puffed out"), and I am very unhappy as there were other issues. I tried tacking the shirts down to anchor the fronts but want to know what I can do next time. Is it true that sewing through the emblems will break needles? HELP!

My t-shirt quilt got quilted all the way and she did a FANTASTIC job. My daughter has it at College and has had NO PROBLEMS ......

I sewed around the different designs on mine and it was fine. maybe your laq was not wanting to take the time or trouble. if the material is not too thick, you should be able to tack it or even do some hand quilting of your own. I am still working on my squares. I am using white flannel for the backing , thin batting , and pellum ironed on the t-shirt emblem. I am sewing each square together and then putting a 1 1/2 inch strip of sport material around to frame it. I have yet to put it together. I am riding bky the seat of my pants and creating as I go.

I have done several t-shirt quilts. My daughter and I did one for a friend of hers that does a lot with Special Olympics. First we ironed a interfacing we bought at the quilt shop, we put strips around each shirt and did borders around the quilt. Our backing was black and we had it quilted with the Olympic torch and it was just beautiful, he was one happy fellow.
Everyone says to quilt over the shirts, those t-shirts arent heavy and dont break needles, dont think she wanted to do it dont think I'd go back to her.

The woman that quilts mine has a computerized longarm. She quilted over all of the shirts, including the one with the solid, very firm design. She must not have had a problem because she quilted second tee shirt quilt for me after that. They were both beautiful. I think you need to find someone else to quilt for you.

My quilter quilts thru all the t shirt emblems. I'm guessing your quilter maybe wasn't sure about how her machine would go thru all the emblems. It is true that sometimes the needles holes will show a bit but once washed they disappear. It should not be a problem at all going thru the emblems!

I made one for my daughter and didn't have any problems like that.

Thanks for all the feedback. I really feel badly now that I didn't check this out when I first planned on having it quilted. Lesson learned!