10 tips to sew your t-shirt quilt

Ever since I met him, my hubby has had a close relationship with geeky t-shirts. He has so many of them, that over the years I’ve been able to make some of them – those that were starting to wear out – disappear into my fabric stash without him noticing. Because one day, I would use them all to sew a t-shirt quilt.

The pile kept growing and slowly started screaming for my attention. The only problem was, that I had never made a quilt before.

Fortunately, you can always count on the internet. And since I enjoyed making this quilt so much, I’m sharing my 10 tips in case you’d like to sew one yourself. Have fun!

1. Make a template

As mentioned earlier, I’d never made a quilt before. So a complicated pattern was not an option. Square parts that were all the same size was the way to go. 40 by 40 cm turned out to be the best size to make sure all the prints were covered. To avoid endless measuring and drawing, I made a cardboard template that measures 42 by 42 cm. Seam included.

2. Buy a cutting mat, a cutting ruler and a rotary cutter

Just do it. At first, I kept using my fabric scissors, blissfully ignorant as I was. It took forever. A rotary cutter makes you work three times as fast. Seriously. In the meantime, I already invested in an A0-sized cutting mat. There’s no stopping me now. A few more months, and I’ll be using my fabric scissors to cut paper (just kidding!).

3. Stabilise your t-shirt squares

Quilting is normally done with non-stretch fabrics, to avoid your fabric shifting and stretching. To avoid that from happening, iron fusible interfacing on the back of your squares, to take some of the stretch out. I used H200, and in hindsight, I wonder whether a bit sturdier would have been better.

4. Use backing and batting that is at least 10 cm larger on each side

That way, you have something to hold on to when you reach the edges, and your machine won’t eat it all. Plus it will prevent you from getting into trouble if your layers do start to shift (which they will anyhow).

I forgot to do this, and it did get me in a bit of a pickle.

5. Use a zigzag stitch to attach pieces of batting

My t-shirt quilt measures 200 by 200 cm. The batting I bought was only 150 cm wide. That’s not a problem, since you can puzzle pieces together to make your batting big enough. But you need to do this right.

Make sure you cut the edges straight, put them next to each other, and use a zigzag stitch to stitch them together. You can find more details on how to do this right on the crafty quilter’s blog.

Make sure not to use a seam, something I did, and which made me end up with a big bulge somewhere in my quilt. Oh well, rookie mistake.

6. Use safety pins to pin it all together

Really, just do it. You limit the risk to hurt yourself to nearly zero.

No safety pins or not enough of them around? You can still use standard pins of course. Just be careful everytime you stroke your fabric to straighten everything out. I cut myself more than once because my hand got stuck in a pin. So, bonus tip: blood stains are best removed as quickly as possible, under cold running water.

7. Use a walking foot

It ensures that you guide all your layers of fabric through your machine at the same pace, avoiding unwanted creases. Mine cost 20 euros, and saved me loads of frustrations.

8. Sew straight lines across the whole length and width

Start at the top in the middle, and move towards the outer sides. That’s the easiest way. If you want to sew squares to frame your t-shirt designs, work in the same way, and cut your thread along the way.

Don’t do as I did. I tried to sew each square separately and as a whole, which mainly meant that I kept on pushing the whole of my quilt through my machine, shifting my layers each time I did so.

9. Roll up your quilt to easily move it through your machine

Goes seamlessly with the previous tip. Roll up your quilt into a tight role. Use elastics or trouser clips to keep your bundle together. Start in the middle, unroll as you move along, and then do it all over again from the other sides.

10. Youtube is your friend

These channels answered a lot of my questions (unfortunately, some of these videos I only found once my mistakes were already made).

Man sewing:
- Piecing a t-shirt quilt top
- Binding by machine
Melanie Ham:
- Your first quilt
- The best machine binding method
The midnight quilt show
- Baste it with Angela
- Tips and tricks for quiting with a walking foot

What with the leftover fabric?

So, what did I do with the back of those 25 t-shirts? They went back into the fabric cupboard of course. My first idea was to make a t-shirt rug out of them. But in the meantime, part of them have been of great use to make straps for a whole load of mouth masks.