If you have, you either loved it or hated it. At least that’s what I’ve been told by so many. It’s definitely a different animal than a traditional quilt. Yes, it’s cut, pieced, can be sashed and bordered. It’s quilted and bound. But it takes another step in making it and that is the stabilizer.
For a long time T-shirt Quilt makers just pressed a regular fusible interfacing on the backs of the T-shirts. Unfortunately, it didn’t hold very well and definitely stayed stretchy. Next came a French fuse stabilizer that worked with the stretch, but remained stretchy, which just gave a stretchy blanket effect.
When we started making custom T-shirt quilts for people we found a better solution. It is called Cotton Woven stabilizer. We like Heat-n-Bond’s brand because it fuses well. After it is applied, the block is firm and no more stretchy than a cotton quilt block.
Our process is like this:
- Cut the T-Shirt apart at the sides and shoulders, trimming off the sleeves.
- Choose a block size and cut the block an inch or two bigger than you’re chosen size.
- Cut the cotton woven stabilizer bigger than the chose size and place on the back of the T-shirt design.
- Steam press very well and let cool.
- Next cut the chosen size with your square ruler. We use an extra large square, 14 1/2″ – 16 1/2″. Oversizing the first cut and the stabilizer makes sure your stabilizer fuses all the way to the edges once it’s trimmed down.
- After all the blocks are stabilized and trimmed to size, you will put your blocks on a design wall in the order desired.
- If you choose to add sashing, cut the sashing to the size of the cut block width. In other words, if you have 14 1/2″ square blocks, you cut all your sashing to 14 1/2″ by the chosen width of sashing, maybe 2 1/2″
- Sew sashing strips between each column of blocks.
- Cut cornerstone squares the same as the width of sashing ( 2 1/2″ ).
- Sew a column of sashing strips with a cornerstone between each one, using the same number of strips as the number of blocks in the column.
- Repeat this process for each column of blocks until you have all the columns sewn together with sashing between each block and between each column.
- Add borders, if you choose, and your quilt top is complete. Quilt as desired and bind. It’s done!
- Of course, if that’s not your cup of tea, you can bring your clean, uncut T-shirts to me! Sherri and I will turn them into a beautiful keepsake quilt.