T Shirt Quilt Tips and Techniques

Making a quilt out of your favorite t shirts is not only memorable, it is also green! You can repurpose t shirts instead of throwing them out. I supposed you could cut them up into clearning rags, but making a quilt is so much more fun! The trick to working with t shirts in quilts is to stabilize the soft stretchy knit fabric. Here’s how I do it.

Step 1: Deconstruct The T Shirt

I deconstruct t shirts by cutting them open along both sides and cutting off the neck binding and the sleeves. If you wanted a bigger piece of fabric, you could open it up only on one side, but I find it easier to work with the front and back of the shirt separately.

Ok, I admit, I had to learn this the hard way. I used some T shirts in my daughter’s 100 Good Wishes Quilt and I just cut out a square. By the time I was ready to sew it in the quilt, it was no longer a square and not even close to the size I cut it.

T shirts are really stretchy, so you have to stabilize them BEFORE you cut any shapes for your quilt. I use the lightest weight I can find and iron it on the back side of the piece of clothing BEFORE cutting it. (An example of the kind I use is Pellon lightweight non-woven fusible interfacing. It comes in white and dark gray.) To save on Pellon, I cut it into squares an inch or two larger than I want the final t shirt square to be. So the order is, cut the stablizer in to squares, then iron it onto the wrong side of the t shirt, then cut the stabilized t shirt into the size square you want to use.

Here is a basketball jersey that is ready for stabilizer.

And here it is with the stabilizer ironed on to the back.

Here is a t shirt block that I've trimmed size, front view.

And here is the back of that block.

Step 3: Make a Quilt

If you can cut all of the shirts into squares or rectangles of the same size, you can just sew them together in rows or do simple sashing between the blocks. Also, I have a new pattern available that would work great for a T shirt quilt.

I recently made a quilt out of basketball jerseys and team t shirts for my nephew and I couldn’t cut all the logos and numbers into the same size blocks. So instead I cut 3” wide strips of scraps of green fabric (his team colors are green and gold) and sewed them to the edges of the various size t shirt blocks. Then I trimmed them all to the same size square (13”) and assembled them in rows. This was easy to do and did not require a huge amount of design work.

Here are two blocks that have been trimmed to the same size and are ready to sew into a quilt.

Once I had all the blocks cut to the same size, I arranged them in rows and columns that I liked. I don’t have a large design wall in my sewing room, so to keep quilt blocks laid out in the right place before I sew them, I spread a large flannel sheet on the floor and I arrange blocks on the sheet. When I need to clean up for the day, I can roll up the sheet and all the blocks stay in place. The next day, I carefully unroll it and continue assembling the quilt.

If you don’t have room for the sheet trick, you can also arrange your blocks on a bed or on the floor and then take a digital photo. You can refer back to the photo when you are assembling the quilt and this helps you remember your design layout.

To make a super warm and cozy T shirt quilt, you can use polar fleece for the backingand leave out batting. (Unfortunately, I haven’t yet found an organic fleece that I really like.)

You can bind the quilt as usual, or you can use the backing fleece for the binding by leaving 2 inches or so of fleece around the edges of quilt top. Then simply fold it over twice so that it overlaps the top edges of the quilt and sew the binding down from the front of the quilt.

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