Help for T-shirt quilt
 

I have made a couple of commissioned T-shirt quilts. Once you have all of them together, figure out how many of them can be cut with the same dimensions - or at least the same height or width. If there is something really special that you want to be the focus - pick it! and center it in your design. Then you need graph paper to figure out what size you want the finished product to be. Draw in those that you have settled on a size for and don't forget the seam allowances that will be lost. I try to use those same size blocks in the center, either horizontally or vertically. Then looking at the designs of the others, try to keep cut sizes as close to the same as possible. I put everything together with sashing strips which will cut down on stretch in the long run. Both of mine came out in three vertical rows and the sashing pulled them together whether they were the same widths or heights or not. I'm sure there are others out there who have more experience with this. I did not use any stabilizer, and I know that one of them is still used every night at least ten years later. Good luck with your labor of love!

This is my favorite pattern for a tshirt quilt. The blocks can be any size. The sashing is just on two sides...I love the look of it 'floating' off the top.

I love the floating effect ! I have never seen that done with a T-Shirt quilt , I have a couple to do this year and that might just be one of them !

I love the floating t/shirt blocks but my son wears only black t/shirts could I still shadow them in a quilt?

My advice would be to use stabilizer on the backs of the shirts. I know you can make them without it, and the quilts will be just as nice, but stabilizer makes it SOOO much easier to work with the shirts, both when piecing and when quilting. I've done both ways (with and without stabilizer) on the longarm, and with stabilizer is easier to work with on the LA. Just some personal observations in case you are sending this out to a longarmer.

Christine

My first piece of advice would be to NOT cut anything until you know what your block size will be. You may need to have a lot of background around a picture, etc but it is way easier than working with many different size blocks. For a first time t-shirt quilt I would try to have all my blocks be the same size.

I would definitely use stabilizer. And be sure to iron the stabilizer on before you cut your blocks out. You want the stabilizer to go all the way to the edges of the blocks so that you don't end up with blocks that are out of square.

Here is a pic of the modified one I made my daughter for her fifth grade graduation gift. It included t-shirts and hoodies from K3 to fifth grades. The hoodies all have open pockets and the one in the center has a working zipper with a tie die t-shirt that is visible when it is unzipped. It was crazy because of all the different sizes but it turned out great!

There are some super tutorials online. Just google t-shirt quilts.

http://www.quiltingboard.com/members...881-455926.JPG

If you go on amazon, there are great books on making t-shirt quilts.

Thanks everyone for your feedback.

I'm helping my nephew's wife make one of some of their memorable t-shirts. She wanted random sizes similar to the quilt pictured above. We laid the roughly cut pieces (cut with the rotary cutter, so they are squared up, just not sized) all out (after ironing lightweight interfacing on the back of them) and tried to come up with sets of pieces to form larger units to be sewn together. Several small pieces sewn together to equal the width of a larger a piece. Sew, then trim to to even up. I'm a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants person. So far we've got several units sewn together. We are saving pieces of the shirts with no pictures just in case we need some little strips for fillers. I hope I've got her going in the right direction. :-)