T-shirt Quilt Interfacing too stiff
 

Hello everyone. I'm new here and so I apologize in advance if I'm doing this wrong, or for whatever mistakes I may possibly make in posting this question. My mom, who is a beginner sewer, made a t-shirt quilt. She asked me to finish it for her and I agreed. I had never seen it before, so when she dropped it off I almost died. She used very stiff interfacing on the entire thing. She says she thinks she used Pellon 809 fusible interfacing. What can I do to make this less stiff? Would washing and drying it a million times work? I don't know what to do. I read some stuff online where people suggested re-ironing it to get the glue soft and then trying to peel it off. But that seems very time consuming and it's also been sewed into the seams and so even those are stiff. These shirts were my grandmother's, and are irreplaceable. Is there any way at all to save this quilt? Any tips are greatly appreciated.

Choosing the right interfacing for a project has always been hard on me, even when I did a lot of garment construction. I have to throw myself on the mercy of the fabric store staff, which sometimes works better than others.

I don't know of anything really you can do to soften it except to use it and love it and wash it. I'd do a practice piece or two not on the quilt to see how your thread and needle combination would work. You might need to use a huge needle (like a 16) and a rather large stitch. I'd try a 12 or 14 needle first and see how it goes, but I would do minimal quilting. You can do grids or gentle arcs, and depending on your skills you may be able to maneuver it around pretty well to do a fairly wide meander.

For designs, you might do some searches on "large stitch" or "sashiko" designs to give you ideas other than grids.

And who knows, there are some advantages to working on stiff as a board things and you might even find it not so bad as you feared -- you might!

Thank you for those useful tips, I'm going to check some of them out. I'm taking your advice and I'm going to accept it the way it is. Because removing this interfacing over the entire quilt will take forever, and may actually ruin the shirts. I'll use it and see if washing it makes it softer over time.

not familiar right off with this Pellon weight--but if it's that really think stuff (board like) you might choose to not use a batting in this quilt--batting gives weight and warmth and allows your stitches to "sink" in and thus have good tension/stitch quality. But quilts can and are made without bat for lots of reasons. While you are making your practice "sandwiches" I would suggest you try both.

Was thinking about this last night, after you quilt it for the first wash it would be worth it to go to a laundromat with one of the extra large machines. I do this for all my queen and larger tops.

After that you should be able to stuff it into a normal large capacity washer, but probably it will never fit in a stackable unit.

Consider what quiltingshorttimer said too, use a very thin batting (no warm and natural!). Maybe try just putting a piece of flannel inside, that gives enough layering to give the quilting stitches something to bite into.

Might be easier on you if you turn it into a wall hanging.

Can't offer advice, but wanted to welcome you to the QuiltingBoard :)

Thank you! I appreciate it. This quilting board has a wealth of knowledge and I hope I learn a thing or two.

The thought has definitely crossed my mind.

Thank you. I'm glad you addressed the batting issue. That was my next issue - I wasn't sure what kind I should go with given it's current state, so I'm thankful for this advice.