T-shirt and hand quilting?????
 

Have any of you t-shirt quilters hand quilted the finished product, and if so, was it worth the difficulty of quilting through the fabric and interfacing?

Hand quilting t-shirt quilts is not the least bit enjoyable. It is very hard to get the needle through the knit fabric and interfacing. They can be tied by hand, but still a lot of work. I used a bar tack on my sewing machine and that worked better than by hand.

For me, no, it would not be worth the difficulty.

I had a friend that did not do all hand quilting but did some big stitch work like sashiko only longer stitches. It was hard work she said.

For me it would not be worth it except for some detail as my friend did on some blocks, not the whole thing.

Thank you for the advice. I did forget to mention that I was thinking about using the big stitch method. Will let you all know how it turns out if I decide to tackle it.

I found it very difficult to hand tie one every 3". Couldn't imagine trying to quilt it by hand, even doing big stitch it would be an exercise in frustration and finger fatigue. Tie it or send it off to a LAer.

You know, some of the newer lightweight fusibles under the t-shirt fabric might make it easier. I am thinking something like MistyFuse could stabilize the t-shirts and yet might be easier to quilt through than, say, Wonder Under. It would probably be best to create a sample with the fusible you will be using and try it out.

I might try the MistyFuse idea -- I haven't used that product. Left to my own devices, I'd probably either baste the T-shirt pieces to lightweight muslin, or else stabilize just along the line you'll stitch for piecing. That would make it easier to quilt by hand.

I hand quilted my grand daughter's T-shirt quilt. I also put sashing between the t-shirts and quilted that. I used a very light weight fusable plus I used a batting. It wasn't any more difficult than quilting any other quilt that I've made.