Before You Sew: The Planning Behind a T-Shirt Quilt

Last week I talked about what makes a T-shirt quilt different from a traditional quilt—and why they're about so much more than sewing a stack of old shirts together.

Well, this week that stack of shirts has officially taken over my cutting table.

And this is the part of making a T-shirt quilt that doesn't always make it into the pretty finished pictures.

Before I can sew anything, I have to figure out exactly what I'm working with.

Every Shirt Is Different

Pull a stack of T-shirts out of a closet and you'll quickly realize they don't play by the nice, tidy rules we're used to with quilting cotton.

One graphic might be 5 inches wide. The next one needs a 12-inch block. One shirt is heavy cotton, another is thin and stretchy, and there's always that one design sitting just close enough to a neckline or seam to make things interesting.

Every T-shirt quilt starts here—a collection of shirts that may not look like they belong together yet, but each one has a story to tell.

That's part of the fun of a T-shirt quilt, though.

I don't necessarily want every block to look exactly alike. I want to preserve the part of each shirt that matters and then figure out how those pieces can work together.

So before I start cutting anything to a final size, I spend some time looking at the shirts and figuring out what each one needs.

Because once I cut it off, we're not sewing it back on. 😉

From T-Shirt to Quilt Block

T-shirt fabric also has a mind of its own.

It's soft and stretchy—which is exactly what makes a favorite old T-shirt so comfortable and exactly what makes it a little ornery when you decide to turn it into a quilt.

Before the sewing begins, each shirt has to be prepared with its design, size and place in the quilt in mind.

That's where stabilizer comes in.

Once the shirts are opened up and stabilized, they start behaving a whole lot more like fabric I can work with. I can square them, trim them and handle them without constantly fighting that stretch.

And slowly, that pile of shirts starts becoming a stack of quilt blocks.

There's something pretty satisfying about that transformation.

And Then the Real Puzzle Begins

Here's where this particular quilt gets interesting.

These blocks aren't all going to be the same size.

Some of the shirt designs need more room than others, and I'd rather work around that than sacrifice part of a graphic just to make everything fit into identical squares.

Which means I now have a colorful stack of different-sized blocks—and somehow all of them have to become one quilt.

Different shirts, different memories, one quilt. Careful planning helps all those individual pieces come together.

This is the part I really enjoy.

It's a little like putting together a puzzle when nobody gave you the picture on the box.

I'll start laying everything out, move one block over here, decide it doesn't work, move it somewhere else, stand back and look at it...

Then probably move it again.

Colors have to feel balanced. Sizes have to work together. And somewhere in all of that, the layout eventually starts to click.

Sometimes the Best Thing You Can Do Is Wait to Sew

I'll admit, I'm not always particularly good at this part.

I like sewing. Once I've got fabric cut, I want to get to the machine and make something happen.

But quilting has taught me more than once that rushing through the preparation usually doesn't save me any time. It just means I get to spend that time later with my seam ripper.

Funny how that works.

So for now, I'm resisting the urge to start stitching.

The shirts are stabilized. The blocks are being trimmed. And pretty soon I'll have them spread out so I can figure out how this colorful little puzzle wants to come together.

And when I do, I'll bring you along for that part too.

Because I have a feeling there may be quite a bit of moving things around before I sew that first seam.