T Shirt Quilt Journey with Lady A

This summer my oldest daughter dove into sewing in a whole new way. One of her biggest projects was a t shirt quilt and today, she is here sharing her story. Please give a warm welcome to my oldest, Lady A.

I started out by picking out all of my shirts and cutting them up to all around the average size (13”x13”) making sure to include the logos on them.*  Once you have them all nice and cut take the time to lay them out the way that you want them.  I’m not a tall person, I am 5’2”, so I may have used less shirts then you may need to.  I like my blankets nice and big so that I can wrap myself into them.  Saying this, I laid my quilt out so that it was roughly 5’x6’.**

Here’s the fun part, time to go to the fabric store!  My mom was nice enough to drive me out to the nearest Joann store and fund my purchase.  (YAY!!! Go Mom!)  There are so many fabrics to choose from for the back (aka inside) of your quilt.  There is fleece, flannel, cotton you name it and the nice people at JoAnn’s (or your local fabric store) will know exactly what you’re talking about and help you find it.  Personally, I chose fleece because I loved the feel.  While you’re out at the store make sure to pick up some interfacing for your t-shirts.  I got the nice fusible iron on stuff because we used it in my apparel class at school and its simple and easy to use.  Just use an iron!

Once you come back from the store it’s time to get started.  Before we can sew we have to interface all of the squares.  Now yes I know that some of you just moaned a little on the inside because this does take a little bit of time.  And this was one of my least favorite part of making the quilt.  But, it is worth it in the end so bust through it!  If I did it so can you!

What time is it?  It’s sewing time!  That’s right, now that all of the squares are interfaced it’s time to sew them all together.  Now, my mom is very smart when it comes to little tips and tricks with sewing and crafts so she helped me cut my steps in half.  She did so by telling me instead of sewing the squares together with a sewing machine, to do it with a serger so that it cuts off the extra fabric for me while I’m also attaching the two fabrics together!  Thanks Mom for the nifty tricks of the trade!  Also the quilt was SO HEAVY when sewing so I had my mom help me by holding the quilt while I sewed so that I could get a straight line.  After all of the squares are sewn together you sew the fabric for your back (mine was fleece) to the perimeter of the squares.

Yay!  Congratulations, you have now successfully created your first t-shirt quilt.  If you’re like me, all you want to do right now is just curl up under your new quilt and watch a movie, but no!  It’s time to go and show all of your friends and family your latest creation.  Text, call, share, and post your success and share it with the world!  Now that all of that is taken care of, you may curl up and sleep under your new t-shirt quilt.  Enjoy!  (I know I sure will.)

NOTES:

*I ran into a little jam with the squares.  I realized that I didn’t actually cut them all to the same sizes so my mom helped me through this little hiccup with the idea to make to quilt into a subway “print”. Click here for more T Shirt Quilt How To.

**Now, as I said my measurements were a little wonky so my quilt really came out to be around 6’x6’.

Stay tuned because I’m pretty sure this T Shirt quilt was just one of many stops on her sewing journey. In the meantime, click here if you want to learn a bit more about Lady A.

 

 

 

 

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