The first quilts I made were t-shirt quilts for my twins. Luckily someone at the fabric store told me about the interfacing I didn't use batting, but used polar fleece for the back, and just turned them envelope-style and tied them. After 7+ years of hard use, they need some fixing, and I might consider disassembling and remaking, or just doing some machine quilting for support.

I confess the downside of actually using a t-shirt quilt on the bed is that when the bed is unmade (most of the time ) it not only looks like a messy bed, but looks like it's covered with laundry!!
Florence

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FONS AND PORTER shows how to make T SHIRT quilts in their current series 1100. They had some good ideas ..... especially the importance of stablizing the fabric. They suggested using a knit stablizer as they felt it wore better when the quilt was in use and did not bubble as much.


IF you get the chance look at the DVD / show segment before diving in.

When I do a t-shirt quilt for a client, I use the fusible tricot. It's very lightweight but stabilizes wonderfully. I use the logo on the shirt with about an inch margin around it. Depending on the size, it will either become a block itself or I'll piece a couple together to get them up to size.
I quilt them with an all-over pattern, right through everything. If you don't do some quilting within the block, after a while the shirts will begin to sag. Don't forget-they're heavier than regular blocks because they're already 2 layers.
I use regular batting and backing, and I coordinate the colors of the sashing and backing-the client chooses the colors.
Hope this helps,
eileenkny

I am making a t shirt quilt for my husband as well, and have run into a somewhat similar problem - not the webbed jersy but shirts he wore so much they look like swiss cheese (this quilt is my defense as he will not let me toss out this shirts ) Anyway I am lining the holey shirts using matching colors of cotton and fusible web. Now the web might not be a good idea with the web jersy, but maybe you could try a temporary addhesive of some kind and then anchor the jersy down with some top stitching.

krystallees wrote:
You might have to line the blocks with the jersey's, then quilt by either stitch-in-the-ditch or tying it.

DH just went through his t-shirts and hinted he wanted me to make them into a quilt for him

I have several bags of t-shirts to make quilts out of for my 3 kids. When we traveled, we bought them t-shirts as souviners. Now that they are in their 20's it's time to make quilts out of them. I took a class years ago, and we just cut around the design part of the t-shirt and filled in with blocks around it. I like the sashing part better.
Frances in warm Austin.

I have made 4 t-shirt quilts and always machine quilted them myself. I usually stitch in the ditch along the sashing and sometimes outline the designs on the t-shirt blocks themselves. The one thing I didn't do is stitch through any of that real stiff rubbery printing like on the numbers on the backs of sports team shirts. Just go around those. I always use batting and flannel for the back. They turn out to be the best stadium blankets ever!

Nancy in sunny and finally warm western NY

I am making a t-shirt quilt for my husband and I wanted to use his basketball jersey but it is very different than the t-shirts (what with the holes!) I am not sure if I could use it or not. What do you think? :shock:

Eileen you weren't kidding about webshots! My husband wants a t-shirt quilt (and I want to get rid of the thousands of shirts). I went to the website and was amazed that they have over 2000 t-shirt quilts to view :shock: . Thanks for the tip. Lots of ideas.

Lilo

Another site you can go to for pictures of t-shirt quilts and, any other type, is webshots. Type in the quilt you're looking for and voila!

uh-oh I should have asked first. At least there will be no surprises at this point. I guess I will take it very slow, and until the threads get here, I will take my scraps and practice. Thanks.

Louisa
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PnPQuiltGuilder wrote:

Now that I have finished mine. The one thing I would not do next time is use sweatshirts. I had mine professionally quilted and even their long arm had trouble getting through the sweatshirt, batting and backing. They ended up quilting around it which was very pretty. Hope this helps and saves you a lot of headache.

I just did this exercise here two wks ago and found out it is to stabilize everything. I had t-shirts and sweatshirts to work with. I used the interfacing on the t-shirts to equalize the weight with the sweatshirts, but after piecing the top, I realized I should have used it on the sweatshirts too. Even with a walking foot, it was tough, but the stabilized t-shirts gave me no problems.

Now, may I expand:
I also read that these quilts are usually tied, but I want to quilt mine. Now that we are talking about this kind of quilt, I wonder if anyone has any tips (BTDT). One friend said to make it really simple if I am not going to tie it. I would have already started, but it took me a while to select the Superior threads I wanted, and as soon as they arrive, I am going to work on it.

No, I haven't tried to see if it fits under the Aurora's head. I expect to make it fit! Grand Finale gives you lots of confidence, you know!

Another by the way: I learned a great new trick. We didn't have a pattern, but the very smart, techno-savy DGD went online and Google searched "images" for t-shirt quilts. She found a gotta have on the 16th page! It is the one with the stars at the cornerstones. I have now found that searching via images is a fun way to search for a lot of things.

Louisa
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I have a bunch of saved tshirts and sweatshirts that I would like to finally put together. Thanks everyone for the tips on this forum--I wouldn't have thought to put interfacing on.

But does anyone know the purpose(s) of the interfacing? From my clothes-making days, I recall that after washing sometimes the interfacing shrank or the fabric did but not both and it wasn't nice-looking after it was washed. So if the interfacing is more or less to make it easier to sew, but not to be there after quilting, would it be better to use something like Ricky's stable stuff that separates itself from the fabric after washing?