This summer, I finally took to cutting up some of my t-shirts from high school and making a blanket out of them. I love t-shirts and instead of throwing them away, this is a much better way of parting with them. Like many of my other crafts, I found a great tutorial for this quilt on Pinterest. The woman that wrote THIS tutorial made it really clear and easy!
This was my first real sewing endeavor and I am really happy with how it came out. I used 22 of my "favorite" t-shirts from high school, featherweight, fusable interfacing, a twin sheet for the backing and low-loft, twin sized batting for the filling.
When completed, my quilt measured about 70.5 by 56.5 inches. This is smaller than a standard twin size quilt or blanket, but it is still a good size and it is really warm!
A big tip when it comes to the sewing is to use the walking foot on your sewing machine. It moves the fabric from the top and bottom so it doesn't stretch out as you sew!
Here are the steps I took to make my blanket:
1. Pick out 20 (or in my case 22) t-shrits that you want to make into your blanket.
2. Wash and dry them without fabric softener.
3. Iron the shirts, using a dishtowel over the design so they don't melt.
4. Mark and cut your t-shirts into 15x15 inch squares, centering the design on the shirt as best as possible. Many t-shirts have designs that are placed higher up on the shirt. I placed the top of my ruler at the collar of the shirt and centered the design width wise as best as possible.
5. Cut your featherweight, fusable interfacing to 15x15 inch squares also.
6. Using a steam iron, iron the interfacing to the back of each of the t-shirts. This will help to keep them stable in your quilt.
8. Mark another 1/4 inch line on all four edges of the square. This will be your 1/4 inch seam allowance.
11. Press the seams flat.
12. Sew columns A and B together and columns C and D together.
13. Press seams flat.
14. Sew the two big blocks up the middle, connecting columns B and C together. This makes your quilt top.
15. Iron your backing. I used a twin sized sheet for my backing so I would not have to piece fabric together. I laid the backing on the floor, placed the quilt top ontop of it and traced around it, leaving two inches on each side. This will be folded over and used as the binding for the sides.
16. Lay backing out on the floor, right side down. Place the batting ontop of it (which I also cut down to fit the size of my quilt top) and then place the quilt top ontop of the batting.
17. Pin all three layers together.
18. I then did a cross-stitch on the places where four squares came together. You can quilt as desired instead.
19. Fold the excess backing in half (about an inch) and then over the edge of the quilt to make your binding. Pin all the way around.
20. Sew binding all the way around, leaving about 1/4 inch seam allowance. I put my stitches about 1/4 inch from the middle of the quilt (3/4 inch from the outer edge of the quilt).
I love my t-shirt quilt. It is really warm and puts a good use to all the shirts I got in high school. I had an abudance of t-shirts so I picked the ones that had the most meaning or memories behind them. I picked shirts from each year of volleyball, I played for four years. I picked shirts that were special honors I recieved, like Matter of Pride and being a Senior Mentor. I also picked shirts from clubs I was a part of, like National Honors Society, Target Success, Science Olympiad and choir.
A few of the shirts had narrow designs on them, so I used two to make one square. I cut each t-shirt and interfacing to 7 1/2 by 15 inch rectangles origionally. Then, instead of cutting the half inch off the bottom for the first markings, I did 1/4 inch off the top and the bottom.
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