caspoohbear

I am making a t-shirt quilt for an April 4 birthday. It took me 2 hours yesterday just to stabilize and cut logos out of 3 shirts. My hubby planned a 9 day vaca for us in March. I am now panicking that I'm going to run out of time. Is there any way to do this faster? (Using damp press cloth to steam stabilizer to shirt with iron per instructions on the stabilizer I bought.)

erstan947

I use spray baste. Faster for me:)

Scissor Queen

Once you get the t-shirts all stabilized and cut it'll go faster.

dorrell ann

I also use spray baste.

Scissor Queen

To put stabilzer on the t-shirts? After it's washed the stabilizer won't be stuck to the shirt anymore.

Barb_MO

I use pellon woven interfacing and I just iron it on the back of the shirt, then cut the logo or however much of the shirt I wanted to use. It doesn't seen to take too long and the shirts don't stretch.
I found that it took longer to cut the shirts apart than it did the rest of the block making.

vschieve

I was told by instructor to use a medium weight iron on interfacing. Cut the necks and sleeves out, iron it to the interfacing, then cut squares with your rotary. That's straight from the instructor when I asked because I have never done one but plan to.

Show us your's when you finish.

q.alba

"Been there, done that." The first several I made, I followed the instructions on the fusible interfacing and it took me days! but then I took a class and now this is what I do:

Skip using the damp cloth. Just use your iron and steam directly on the interfacing. If the interfacing starts separating from the t-shirt before you get it all sewn together, press it again. It will fuse again.

Don't be precise when cutting out the logo you want. Just roughly cut it out a lot larger than you want. I have found anyway that the squares shrink when the interfacing is applied.

Set up a wide makeshift ironing board, such as a piece of plywood (around 24 inches wide) with something covering it. Depending on the width of fusible, place one or two t-shirts right side down, put the interfacing down (making sure the fusible stuff is going to be fusing to the t-shirt not the iron. ask me why I say this.) and just start pressing with full steam, holding it in one spot for so many seconds like the fusible interfacing instructions tell you to do, overlapping, etc.

Just keep doing this until all shirts are fused, then cut apart and then do your final trimming.

I also went to the local lumber store and had them cut me a 14 1/2 inch square up from clear plexiglas that I use to cut out the block (I mainly do squares that are sashed together). My other square-ups with all the lines kept "making" me try to be perfect. Now I just use my clear square and "eyeball" it and when I think is is as centered as it can be, I use my rotary cutter to cut around the square.

This has saved me hours of standing at the ironing board. I first tried to be so precise and perfect and really when I saw some of the t-shirts I used. The print was so crooked or the shirt was so "well-loved" that who would really be able to tell that it is off center by 1/4 inch.

Hope this helps!