As a young girl, my mother taught me how to sew. She has made me several wonderful quilts in recent years, as well as countless other things throughout my life like halloween costumes and doll clothing. So, when I decided to make a t-shirt quilt, I felt like I had been well enough prepared from a lifetime of watching and learning, but it was surely not easy. This post is detailing the way that I completed my quilt, but it is not for beginners. I hope that in the future I will have more beginner-friendly sewing instructions, but for now, I wanted to still share this for those who have sewn before, but perhaps do not know how to tackle the task of designing and making a t-shirt quilt.

In May 2012, my husband and I both graduated from the University of Florida. Over the course of our four years there, it seems like we accumulated more than a million t-shirts. After some convincing, I was able to claim enough shirts for a t-shirt quilt. I did a lot of online research to figure out the best way to turn them into a quilt, and just couldn’t bring myself to do something that wasn’t going to be awesome and last forever. Little did I know that I was embarking on a project that would take me about two years to complete, but it has been worth it, because I love how it turned out.

As my mother is a quilter, I got some of her advice, and decided to make it like a real quilt, but just piecing together t-shirts for the front instead of other fabric. My first task was to design the layout of my quilt. I found a UF patterned fabric at Joann’s that I decided to use for the back and the back, border, and margins between the shirts. For ease of sewing, I decided that I needed to have five columns that were different widths to accommodate the different sized shirts, but with the same length, that I could sew each column individually, and then sew them together afterwards. This also then would look nice, because the shirt sections could be custom to the sizes of the logos on the shirts, rather than cutting them all to the same size and having them off center. Once this was decided, it was a lot of measuring and looking at how the numbers might fit together.

As you can see on the pages above, I measured the logos on each of the t-shirts for the smallest and largest sizes they could possibly be, and then also categorized them by color. Once this was done, I tallied up to see how many shirts fell into different widths, so that I could see what widths I needed to make the five columns. They ended up being 13″, 14.5″, 12″, 14″, and another 14.5″. Once I knew which shirts had to go in which columns, I had to make sure the height of each of the shirts would add up to the same height for the total columns. To do this, I folded all the shirts into roughly the sizes they would need to be, and then laid them out and moved them around until they looked like they would fit.

Once I had an idea of the layout, I confirmed the measurements, and made my final list for shirts.

Additionally, I had to measure and plan the sizes for the margins, and have a plan for the final size of the quilt, which was 80″ x 80″. I didn’t set out intending for it to be square, but it worked out with the sizes of the shirts. After these measurements, then I could also figure out how much of the UF fabric to buy.

After that, what felt like the hard part was over, but in reality, I was less than six months in. The longest part of the project was getting the shirts ready to sew. Because the fabric of t-shirts is stretchy, it’s important to use an iron-on backing to give them some stiffness. This way, when you’re sewing, it doesn’t end up stretching and not being even. So, the process of getting the shirts ready to sew was: First, cut the shirt to the the cut size (sewn size + .75″ extra for width and height). Second, cut the iron-on backing to the same size as the shirt + an extra .5″ for width and height. Third, follow the process for attaching the backing to the shirt. For the backing I used, this was setting up the ironing board and lining up the shirt and backing, holding the iron down on the backing for 20-30 seconds, and then moving it until the whole shirt had been attached. Fourth, cutting the shirt + backing back to the right cut size (sewn size + .5″ extra for width and height). Once all this was done, then the shirts were ready to be sewn. For me, this process took about a year, working on it slowly in the evenings, and occasionally getting my husband to man the iron while I kept cutting.

Once it was ready to sew, it was pretty straight forward. I sewed the columns first, starting with the first shirt, sewing the UF fabric border to it, and then sewing the next shirt to it, and on down. Something my mother taught me in sewing is that when you sew, ironing is almost more important than anything else. It helps keep all the fabric without wrinkle, and make your lines perfect. So, in addition to ironing each individual piece, once two things were sew together with the right-sides facing, then I would iron it back to how it should look. Once each column was done, then I sewed the margins between them, working across the rows the same way I had worked down the columns, with the exception of starting and ending with a long strip for the outer border, rather than starting and ending with a t-shirt. Finally, I sewed the last top and bottom borders, and the piecing of the front was done.

To prepare for quilting, the quilt top, backing, and batting needed to be laid out flat and pinned together. I first laid the backing out on the floor, being very careful to smooth out all the wrinkles. I then used a spray adhesive to help keep the piece in place while I pinned, and also kept me from using so many pins. I sprayed the adhesive on the wrong side of the backing, and then, with the help of people holding on each side of the batting, laid it down very carefully on top of the backing. The adhesive is not permanent, so if you don’t get it right the first time, you can peel it off and re-lay it, but it is a little bit of a pain, because you will need to smooth out the wrinkles again. Once the batting was laid out with no wrinkles, I sprayed it with the adhesive, and then repeated with the top of the quilt, holding it on every side and laying it down carefully and getting out the wrinkles. To make this easier, recruit as many helpers as possible (I had four, one holding each corner) and then I was in charge of actually smoothing from the center moving to the outside as it was laid down. Once it was all laid out with no wrinkles, then I pinned it with safety pins every several inches across the entire quilt, making sure to go through all layers.

For the actual quilting of the t-shirts, I used my sewing machine, and decided to first quilt down the edge of each of the margins in white thread, which would blend into the UF fabric. Then, I quilted on top of the shirts to make sure they were secure, using thread in the color of the shirt for the front side (top bobbin), and white thread for the back side (bottom bobbin). Once that was finally finished, to finish the edges, I trimmed everything up and then added a binding. For it, I folded the strips of fabric in half (right sides out), and then sewed it with the machine on the back of the quilt. Then, for the only hand stitching of the project, I sewed the folded edge to the front. By the time I got to this point in the project, my husband and I were in the process of packing and moving, and he sweetly helped hand sew at times to give me a rest, but make sure it was done before we were ready to go.

All in all, this was not an easy project, but it was so much fun, and I love my quilt. If you have any questions about making a t-shirt quilt of your own, I would be happy to help! Below is a list of all the equipment and supplies I used during the process.

What I used to make the quilt:

31 t-shirts

UF print fabric

Batting – Mountain Mist Cream Rose 100% Cotton Needled Batting

Thread – Gutermann 100% Polyester

Adhesive – Dritz Spray Adhesive

Iron-on backing – Pellon Shape Flex, Iron-on Woven Cotton Interfacing

Cutting board – OLFA Rotary Mat

Straight edge – Omni Edge by Omnigrid

Rotary cutter – OLFA 45mm Rotary Cutter

Iron + Ironing board

Sewing Machine – Janome Memory Craft 3000