6 secrets to T-shirt quilting and how-to video tutorial

Stacey Mattish

Contributing Writer

When taking a trip or vacation, people love to buy T-shirts for souvenirs. Sometimes one or two T-shirts become your favorites and you wear them until holes begin to show. Still, you are loath to get rid of your favorite shirt because of the memories associated with it.

To solve this problem, you can make a quilt out of your favorite T-shirts. This way, you get to enjoy the shirt long after you can no longer wear it. Since T-shirts are a different type of fabric from traditional quilting fabric, you need to follow some special techniques when working with them. Linda from All People Quilt shares six secrets to T-shirt quilting.

In this article, we'll review those six secrets to T-shirt quilting as well as a tutorial on how to quilt with T-shirts by Cathie and Steve. See the videos below.

6 secrets to T-shirt quilting

1. Use only T-shirts for the quilt top.

2. If the shirts are too ragtag, you can use woven cotton material to set the squares.

3. Use knit or tricot fusible interfacing. Be sure to place the interfacing stretch opposite the T-shirt stretch. This will give the T-shirt more structure.

4. If you don't have tricot or knit interfacing, you can replace it with woven, fusible interfacing.

5. Do not use nonwoven, fusible interfacing.

6. If your fabric tends to bunch while sewing, try using a walking foot on your sewing machine. This will move the material along the top and bottom evenly.

For more details, check out All People Quilt's video below:

How to sew a T-shirt quilt video tutorial

Cathie and Steve share their tips for T-shirt quilting. They use fleece for the backing of the quilt. One of their tips is to fold your template into quarters so that the center of the template is centered over the image of the T-shirt. They also recommend using ball point needles to keep from puncturing the material too much. For the finishing touch, yarn is pulled through, securing the backing to the rest of the quilt. To see their technique demonstrated, check out their step-by-step video below.