Man Sewing: Piecing a T-shirt Quilt Top 17:30
T-shirt quilts are a great way to get the rest of the life out of a T-shirts that we
have loved for so long already. Today I’m going to show you how to cut them up and put
them right back together. Let’s get started.
That’s right there are several different ways to make great quilts featuring your favorite
t-shirts. So today what I really want to try to focus on is some of the techniques we use
to stabilize the t-shirts themselves so that you can make whatever design you want. Whether
you’re adding your sashings or doing what we’re going to do today is we’re just
going to use the t-shirts themselves to make up our blocks. So we’re going to either
use like you see here, the logo itself or the logo and some added on t-shirt material
to build up to make our squares all the same size so that they will fit into columns as
we go.
So the first step we must do is prepare our t-shirts. So to prepare a t-shirt for t-shirt
quilting first purchase your favorite t-shirt and wear it and wash it and wear it and wash
it forever, right? Until it starts to look a little bit like a new color, a little bit
ratty, a little bit worn out. Mine always start to get stains and holes in them of course.
Now what I’m going to do first off is I’m going to stop and evaluate my design. So I
want you to be thinking where you want to go with this project while I’m showing you
the techniques of how to get there. The first thing we should really talk about is one of
these cool June Taylor rulers that are made. So with this ruler what I can really do is
I can go through if I’ve got a lot of different t-shirts with all different size logos I can
start to look through and decide what size cuts can I make all of my squares if I wanted
all of the squares the same size. That’s actually what sounds to be an easy method
but adding fabric to make your squares the same size I found was actually a much easier
solution. But let me show you how this ruler would work if you want to use it. You’re
going to basically go ahead and find your dead center of the ruler. And you’re going
to kind of center the design. And I’m looking around the design and lines and all of that.
Then you’ll also notice that down here there’s a 10 ½ inch, a 12 ½ inch and a 15 inch is
the outer edges. And there’s cutouts. So you could technically put a chalk pen or pencil
in and you can actually make some markings here so that you could then get the entire
square designed and come back and make all of your cuts. So that’s one way. You’d
mark it through like yay. Real light markings. You don’t need much like that. And then
you would just simply use the ruler itself to cut the lines.
But I wanted to maximize all of the fabric first so I disassembled the shirt. And the
way I did that was I actually took and without even a ruler, I’m just going to kind of
eyeball up the arm. So we’re going to do this to both sides like that. And we found
out, we have a pet hamster at home. He’s a teddy bear hamster so of course we’ve
named him Yogi. And Yogi loves to chew on his bars at night. And that keeps us all awake
at home. So what we’ve learned is he would rather have something fun cloth to pull into
his cage. So he started eating up all of our old kitchen towels and stuff. And so now we
found he loves the sleeves from the t-shirts so we put a sleeve once a week in his cage
and he tears it all up and makes fun little nests and stuff. Isn’t that ridiculous but
hamsters love that kind of thing. So next thing I’m going to do is I’m going to
take this top seam out first. And because I’m trying to maximize my fabric I’m going
to just kind of them, well the tag is not going to show up nicely in our quilt. So that’s
off of there here. And then I’m going to fold this under so that I can take this line
off like this. And then the last two we have are just down here at the bottom. So I basically
have gotten all of my serged edges or all of my seams out of my t-shirt material. And
now it is technically just fabric. But it is not very stable.
So if you were going to use something fantastic like a sashing then what you want to do is
you want to go ahead and stabilize all of your t-shirt material. Or if you’re going
to put shirt to shirt you want to stabilize all of your t-shirt material. So June Taylor
also has a fantastic stabilizer out there that comes in a package and it’s a giant
sheet which I love because technically, design idea, you could use this as a foundation and
build your shirts right on it because normally this giant piece. This is what’s leftover
from the shirt quilts I’ve already been working on. So now what I’m going to do
is I’m going to take my logo design. And I’m going to put it face down on my ironing
board. And the first thing I’m going to do is I’m going to press it first to try
to get all of the creases out because I want my fusible stabilizer to go on and stabilize
all of this material so that it doesn’t flex. It will still have a wonderful hand
on it when we’re ready to use it as a quilt but it will be much easier to sew some very
nice seam lines as we’re working, ok? So with that once I have, I’m going to go ahead
and grab my fusible interfacing and/or stabilizer. And like I said this is specifically designed
for the t-shirt quilts. There’s a rough side on it so I’m feeling, closing my eyes
and feeling. And that rough side is in my fingers so the rough side is the glue side.
And the glue goes on the back of our t-shirts. It will get on your ironing board if you’re
not careful so you don’t want to iron past that. So right here is the edge of my t-shirt
so I’ll often rough cut with my scissors to make sure that I’m maximizing my interfacing/stabilizer.
Also not getting anything stuck to my ironing board like that. And then what I found I like
to do is I’m going to start down here in a corner. And I”m going to slowly let that
glue bond. And then I’m just going to work myself up the fabric as I go, just like that.
You might be able to hear there’s a little bit of the steam function going on in my iron
right now. And I’m not going all the way to the top of my interfacing because I didn’t
rough cut that. But I can see through the interfacing that my t-shirt has ended.
One of the next tricks I learned is that I’m going to go ahead and let that cool while
we chat for a second because I don’t want to be manipulating it moving it all around
while it’s still warm. That could cause the glues to break down, right? So now I can
bring it back into my cutting area. And now what I’m going to do is I’m going to go
after my logos first. So to get the logo I’m going to take that ruler. And of course you
can still see those wonderful chalk marks so I could then cut it as intended as I was
trying to make everything the same size. But here’s another trick I’ll show you. This
is if you’re manipulating all of your logos on your own. Let’s go here to the shorter
side that I have remaining and choose something like let’s say that’s going to be 2 ½,
2 ¼ inches. So what I’m really doing is I’m looking at this line across the top
of the sewing machine logo and this line here along the sewing machine logo. I’m making
sure that all of these lines look nice and crisp and that means I’m squaring or centering
the design. And now I know I’ve got a two and the little line that’s on my ruler gap.
So I’m going to make this cut straight through so that that’s clean there. And that’s
clean there. Of course I was talking and remember our rule, measure twice, cut once. And I went
three lines over here and two lines over there. So I should have slid this in just like that.
Because you see that was what I was really going for. No big deal. I have one less smaller
scrap where I already have an inch scrap made, however you want to look at that, right? So
now that I did those two sides I’m going to go ahead and rotate my design. And again
I’m looking for two and a half or whatever that line is from that edge. And from this
edge now. So first I find the design and the ruler and then I come back and I double checked
that everything is running square with the lines I already cut even if I’m just eyeballing
that. And then that will be trimmed and trimmed like this. And you probably notice that I
didn’t actually cut all the way through because if I want a long, skinny strip later
on I wanted that long and skinny strip to work with. And that brings me to my next point.
I also did the backs whether they had logos on them or not so that I had plenty of this
extra fabric to work with.
So then I just built a stack. And you can see that even my scraps still all have the
interfacing/stabilizer on the back. So now let’s build in a piece that’s going to
fit in. So what I want to do is I want to find a line where that’s going to work.
And I do want to use a nice true cut. So a nice straight cut because I’m going to do
like quarter inch seam allowances. So we’re going to trim this to begin with because I’m
going to literally sew then manipulate then sew then manipulate as I work through this.
So as I’m here I’m now mounting right sides together. And I literally am giving
myself a little bit here past and a little bit down here past so that as I come over
to my sewing machine I’ve got an edge guide on. I have cotton threads in my machine today
because I am doing a quilt. And I’m just double checking. Now one of the keys here
is I kind of hold lightly, I’m not going to push, I’m not going to pull. I’m going
to let the machine do the work as it sews through. And a little bit more of a medium
to slow pace as I’m sewing because I don’t want to be stretching the fibers. And that
interfacing is also there to help support that too. So now one of the other things I
realize is as I made all of these t-shirt choices, not all t-shirts are actually created
the same. Most are silkscreened but some are nowadays these really cool iron ons. But iron
ons really shouldn’t be ironed on again on the front side so I just got in the habit
of ironing most of my work from the back. That way if one of my t-shirts was an iron
on design I wasn’t placing the iron directly on that transfer sheet that was created for
the logo. So first I’ve got my seam nice this way. Now I can flip it back over so it
looks beautiful like that.
And the first thing I’m going to do is I’m going to manipulate off these edges. So I’m
using a lot of the shirt that was already made as my straight line so I can just continue
that cut there. And I’m severely right handed so we’re just going to do it this way. Here’s
a fun trick to show you if I can hold still long enough, right? If I can take the line
here on that seam and this line. Look how square that looks. Look how sharp that looks.
So now I’m going to go ahead and trim that off just like this. And then what I do is
I grab the piece that I intended to attach it to. So let’s say we want to put that
blue piece up in here now, ok? So with this I”m going to take and eyeball and make some
new decisions. If I place this just like this I personally am going to feel like I just
missed the seam allowance where those two lines didn’t come together perfectly if
I have that lined up. So what I really want to now do is I want to manipulate this and
cheat it down a little ways so that it looks like it was intentional. So just like I put
that strip onto the block I can put this block onto the column I’ve already built the exact
same way. I want to double check one thing though. When my seam allowance comes up here
I don’t want it to fall into my logo design. So right now I’m going to cheat it back
a little bit, make sure I’m cool. And then I’m going to go ahead and flip this over
just like this. And then I would bring it to the sewing machine and begin to manipulate
these seams as well.
Let’s talk about quilting a little bit while we’re putting this last column on. And here’s
why, because as I start to sew over the seams where the sashing met the blocks a lot of
t-shirt quilters will try to open those seams up to try to facilitate stitch in the ditch
style quilting which is something we do in a lot of t-shirt quilts. As you can see this
seam approaching here, I don’t worry about that because I like free motion. And I’m
going to stitch near the ditch to secure everything. But I most likely do more free motion work
around the design. So I just let that seam just fall to one side the way it was pressed.
And now we’ll sew through here. Again at a nice medium pace. And now we’ll be ready
to go ahead and do the same thing. Let’s press this seam over this way. Oops I just
did exactly the opposite of what I just trying to show you. Sometimes I think so much about
what I want to say I forget what I’m actually really doing here. Hopefully you’ll forgive
me. We are all human here at Man Sewing. Alright so there we’ve got that seam allowance.
And if you are all on your very best behavior I promise to come back later and talk more
about machine quilting and free motion quilting on t-shirt quilts. I’ll make up this whole
quilt for us and we’ll quilt it together. I think that would be a lot of fun. But first
we’ve got to build the quilt. So that’s what we’re talking about today. Back here
you can see the same thing is going on so I’m going to do the same trick I did earlier.
Here I have a line across here, there’s my corner. I can go ahead and trim this and
this. Did I get that first cut? I’m not very left handed, we’ve already mentioned
that, ok. So that’s trimmed down and my column just keeps growing and growing. And
I bring in my next column.
And the way I love to design is I just manipulate as I go. Manipulate as I go because if at
all possible follow me to the quilt back here. Here’s what I really want to show you some
fun ideas, ok? First if we look at the whole quilt you really don’t see many columns.
If you look really closely you see a couple of major rows going throughout the quilt.
But look at this, this is what I love. There’s four squares that are the same size put together
to make like a four patch and then that four patch comes together and manipulates into
the same size square here. So this quilt itself was actually designed with using the squares
and bigger blocks that were all equal sizes. Where mine I build each square by adding sashing
as I go to manage it. Mostly because I’m using just a few different designs in my shirts
and this will make more character in the all over design. So to sum it all up for you today.
The basic techniques you need to know is you must stabilize your t-shirts so they’re
super easy to work with. Your whole t-shirt was purchased for the design itself so therefore
that becomes the fabric so make sure you treat the design with respect and get it the way
you need it, whether that’s using your ruler or you’re just eyeballing and manipulation
techniques, right? Enjoy putting it all together and then remember it is a super snuggly. These
are quilted in on the couches so on the back of the quilts we often use something like
minky which is on the back of this one. It gives a bunch of wonderful character. Or I
also love some of these fantastic flannels because the feel of the flannel matches the
feel of the t-shirt and puts it all together and makes a fantastic gift item for those
people that love the t-shirts as much as you loved them. So I know it’s a lot of technical
info and a little bit of sewing fun today here at Man Sewing. We appreciate you encouraging
all of these new ideas. The bell has rung so it is time for me to sign off. We’ll
catch you next time right here at Man Sewing.
Thanks for being a Man Sewing fan. It’s great to have you out there encouraging me
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