how to cut tshirts for a shirt quilt

inside: Learn how to cut tshirts for a shirt quilt. Cut and prep the pieces of tshirt to get ready to sew a tshirt quilt. All the details you need to prepare shirts for a quilt.

Years ago I made my husband a t-shirt quilt from a bunch of his old shirts and he loved it. It ended up a lap size tshirt quilt and I learned a lot in the process of making that first t-shirt quilt and today I’m going to share those tips with you today. This tutorial today will show you how to cut tshirts for a shirt quilt. Preparation is very helpful in this process of quilt prep.

T-shirt quilt preparation

When I sewed my first t-shirt quilt I was trying to save space so I cut up all the shirts. I cut only around the graphics not thinking about a standard size for the quilt. It was kind of a mess sewing it all together and I ended up having to piece the squares together and add extra strips of the backing fabric to fill in the holes.

See the small blue stripe of fabric? Yep… I had to really work to get this quilt to work.

This quilt was make about 10 years ago now and I don’t have an in process photos. My husband recently cleaned out his t-shirt drawer and came up with another pile of shirts that he didn’t want to get rid of, but said he would if I made a quilt.

I was planning to just sew a second t-shirt quilt, but my husband requested that I add the new squares to the original quilt. So I took the backing off the quilt and am going to add more squares. It was only a lap quilt size, so the shirt quilt definitely has room to grow.

You can see the finished t-shirt quilt here in this post.

How to cut t shirts for a tshirt quilt –

ok! So let’s learn from my mistakes and do a better job of planning before we cut the shirts this time.

I evaluated the pile of shirts and decided that 14″ x 14″ squares would work with most of the graphics on these shirts. So I cut up the shirts – you can do this ahead of time to reduce space it takes to store the pile of shirts.

If you don’t have time to cut neat squares and want to get rid of the shirts, make sure to cut out larger than you need for the precise cutting later.

Now… there were some shirts with smaller {or larger} graphics. The larger ones I tried to cut on the 14″ grid. I cut a couple that are 14″ x 28″. The smaller ones I am going to try and piece together to 1 full size square.

T-shirt quilt supplies –

• Pile of t-shirts
• Fusible Fleece
• Sewing machine
• Fabric for Backing
  • Can use a flat sheet
  • Sew yardage together of cozy fleece or flannel

Cut the fleece to match the size of the graphic shirt squares and iron to fuse together. The fusible fleece works as a layer of batting and stabilizes the shirt squares.

Be careful when ironing! Some t-shirt graphics you can iron directly, but anything that looks like it will melt or is vinyl you will need to place a layer of parchment paper between the iron and the shirt.

Now you should have a pile of squares ready to be sewn together! I’ll be back on Friday with a post showing you how to put it all together and sew a t-shirt quilt.