Recently made this t-shirt quilt for a friend with a newborn baby boy. The t-shirts came from many family members and included a scarf, handkerchief, and sweatshirt. This baby is wrapped in love! Here’s how I put it together …
I made a t-shirt quilt for my son quite some time ago. I pulled up that video to remember the steps. If you’d like to see that video, here’s a link to my post from December 2018. Watch it to see each step explained along the way in more detail.
Here’s the products I used …
- 8 t-shirts, scarf, handkerchief, and 1 sweatshirt
- light to medium interfusing, allow for 1/2 yard for each t-shirt
- iron and wool mat
- fabric scissors
- thread and needle
- Janome sewing machine
Here’s the steps I followed …
- Pull together your t-shirts. You need at least 9 squares to make a good sized quilt. I used just the fronts, but you can also use the backs for the back of the quilt.
- Decide on the size of the front of the shirts based on images. I first sized the large t-shirts to determine the best size. Some were wider, some were taller, so I arranged them by size.
- Add interfusing to add stability to the t-shirts. I purchased light to medium weight interfusing. Iron the glue side towards the back of the t-shirt. Use steam and an iron on high heat. I recommend a wool mat, it keeps the fabric in place and allows the heat to melt the glue on the fusing.
- Arrange the t-shirts in a pleasing manner. Based on size, I arranged the t-shirts. Then I trimmed them to the desired size.
- Sew together each row, then sew the rows together. Notice the three shirts in the across the middle row are the tallest. The top and bottom rows were shorter.
- Add the layer of batting between the t-shirt front and the backing. I pinned together all three layers so I could quilt along the edge of each t-shirt. You could do a fancier stitch, I chose to keep it simple!
- Next trim along the edge of all three layers and sew the binding to the top edge of the quilt. I hand stitched the back of the binding to back, but you can use the sewing machine. The quilt was approximately 38″ by 41″ so I was able to use a little over a yard for the back. Then another 1/2 yard for the binding.
- They really enjoyed the quilt! Here’s baby Hank at 3 months old. Too cute!
