Man Sewing: Piecing a T-shirt Quilt Top 17:30 T-shirt quilts are a great way to get the
rest of the life out of a T-shirts that we have loved for so long already. Today I’m
going to show you how to cut them up and put them right back together. Let’s get started. That’s right there are several different
ways to make great quilts featuring your favorite t-shirts. So today what I really want to try
to focus on is some of the techniques we use to stabilize the t-shirts themselves so that
you can make whatever design you want. Whether you’re adding your sashings or doing what
we’re going to do today is we’re just going to use the t-shirts themselves to make
up our blocks. So we’re going to either use like you see here, the logo itself or
the logo and some added on t-shirt material to build up to make our squares all the same
size so that they will fit into columns as we go. So the first step we must do is prepare our
t-shirts. So to prepare a t-shirt for t-shirt quilting first purchase your favorite t-shirt
and wear it and wash it and wear it and wash it forever, right? Until it starts to look
a little bit like a new color, a little bit ratty, a little bit worn out. Mine always
start to get stains and holes in them of course. Now what I’m going to do first off is I’m
going to stop and evaluate my design. So I want you to be thinking where you want to
go with this project while I’m showing you the techniques of how to get there. The first
thing we should really talk about is one of these cool June Taylor rulers that are made.
So with this ruler what I can really do is I can go through if I’ve got a lot of different
t-shirts with all different size logos I can start to look through and decide what size
cuts can I make all of my squares if I wanted all of the squares the same size. That’s
actually what sounds to be an easy method but adding fabric to make your squares the
same size I found was actually a much easier solution. But let me show you how this ruler
would work if you want to use it. You’re going to basically go ahead and find your
dead center of the ruler. And you’re going to kind of center the design. And I’m looking
around the design and lines and all of that. Then you’ll also notice that down here there’s
a 10 ½ inch, a 12 ½ inch and a 15 inch is the outer edges. And there’s cutouts. So
you could technically put a chalk pen or pencil in and you can actually make some markings
here so that you could then get the entire square designed and come back and make all
of your cuts. So that’s one way. You’d mark it through like yay. Real light markings.
You don’t need much like that. And then you would just simply use the ruler itself
to cut the lines. But I wanted to maximize all of the fabric
first so I disassembled the shirt. And the way I did that was I actually took and without
even a ruler, I’m just going to kind of eyeball up the arm. So we’re going to do
this to both sides like that. And we found out, we have a pet hamster at home. He’s
a teddy bear hamster so of course we’ve named him Yogi. And Yogi loves to chew on
his bars at night. And that keeps us all awake at home. So what we’ve learned is he would
rather have something fun cloth to pull into his cage. So he started eating up all of our
old kitchen towels and stuff. And so now we found he loves the sleeves from the t-shirts
so we put a sleeve once a week in his cage and he tears it all up and makes fun little
nests and stuff. Isn’t that ridiculous but hamsters love that kind of thing. So next
thing I’m going to do is I’m going to take this top seam out first. And because
I’m trying to maximize my fabric I’m going to just kind of them, well the tag is not
going to show up nicely in our quilt. So that’s off of there here. And then I’m going to
fold this under so that I can take this line off like this. And then the last two we have
are just down here at the bottom. So I basically have gotten all of my serged edges or all
of my seams out of my t-shirt material. And now it is technically just fabric. But it
is not very stable. So if you were going to use something fantastic
like a sashing then what you want to do is you want to go ahead and stabilize all of
your t-shirt material. Or if you’re going to put shirt to shirt you want to stabilize
all of your t-shirt material. So June Taylor also has a fantastic stabilizer out there
that comes in a package and it’s a giant sheet which I love because technically, design
idea, you could use this as a foundation and build your shirts right on it because normally
this giant piece. This is what’s leftover from the shirt quilts I’ve already been
working on. So now what I’m going to do is I’m going to take my logo design. And
I’m going to put it face down on my ironing board. And the first thing I’m going to
do is I’m going to press it first to try to get all of the creases out because I want
my fusible stabilizer to go on and stabilize all of this material so that it doesn’t
flex. It will still have a wonderful hand on it when we’re ready to use it as a quilt
but it will be much easier to sew some very nice seam lines as we’re working, ok? So
with that once I have, I’m going to go ahead and grab my fusible interfacing and/or stabilizer.
And like I said this is specifically designed for the t-shirt quilts. There’s a rough
side on it so I’m feeling, closing my eyes and feeling. And that rough side is in my
fingers so the rough side is the glue side. And the glue goes on the back of our t-shirts.
It will get on your ironing board if you’re not careful so you don’t want to iron past
that. So right here is the edge of my t-shirt so I’ll often rough cut with my scissors
to make sure that I’m maximizing my interfacing/stabilizer. Also not getting anything stuck to my ironing
board like that. And then what I found I like to do is I’m going to start down here in
a corner. And I”m going to slowly let that glue bond. And then I’m just going to work
myself up the fabric as I go, just like that. You might be able to hear there’s a little
bit of the steam function going on in my iron right now. And I’m not going all the way
to the top of my interfacing because I didn’t rough cut that. But I can see through the
interfacing that my t-shirt has ended. One of the next tricks I learned is that I’m
going to go ahead and let that cool while we chat for a second because I don’t want
to be manipulating it moving it all around while it’s still warm. That could cause
the glues to break down, right? So now I can bring it back into my cutting area. And now
what I’m going to do is I’m going to go after my logos first. So to get the logo I’m
going to take that ruler. And of course you can still see those wonderful chalk marks
so I could then cut it as intended as I was trying to make everything the same size. But
here’s another trick I’ll show you. This is if you’re manipulating all of your logos
on your own. Let’s go here to the shorter side that I have remaining and choose something
like let’s say that’s going to be 2 ½, 2 ¼ inches. So what I’m really doing is
I’m looking at this line across the top of the sewing machine logo and this line here
along the sewing machine logo. I’m making sure that all of these lines look nice and
crisp and that means I’m squaring or centering the design. And now I know I’ve got a two
and the little line that’s on my ruler gap. So I’m going to make this cut straight through
so that that’s clean there. And that’s clean there. Of course I was talking and remember
our rule, measure twice, cut once. And I went three lines over here and two lines over there.
So I should have slid this in just like that. Because you see that was what I was really
going for. No big deal. I have one less smaller scrap where I already have an inch scrap made,
however you want to look at that, right? So now that I did those two sides I’m going
to go ahead and rotate my design. And again I’m looking for two and a half or whatever
that line is from that edge. And from this edge now. So first I find the design and the
ruler and then I come back and I double checked that everything is running square with the
lines I already cut even if I’m just eyeballing that. And then that will be trimmed and trimmed
like this. And you probably notice that I didn’t actually cut all the way through
because if I want a long, skinny strip later on I wanted that long and skinny strip to
work with. And that brings me to my next point. I also did the backs whether they had logos
on them or not so that I had plenty of this extra fabric to work with. So then I just built a stack. And you can
see that even my scraps still all have the interfacing/stabilizer on the back. So now
let’s build in a piece that’s going to fit in. So what I want to do is I want to
find a line where that’s going to work. And I do want to use a nice true cut. So a
nice straight cut because I’m going to do like quarter inch seam allowances. So we’re
going to trim this to begin with because I’m going to literally sew then manipulate then
sew then manipulate as I work through this. So as I’m here I’m now mounting right
sides together. And I literally am giving myself a little bit here past and a little
bit down here past so that as I come over to my sewing machine I’ve got an edge guide
on. I have cotton threads in my machine today because I am doing a quilt. And I’m just
double checking. Now one of the keys here is I kind of hold lightly, I’m not going
to push, I’m not going to pull. I’m going to let the machine do the work as it sews
through. And a little bit more of a medium to slow pace as I’m sewing because I don’t
want to be stretching the fibers. And that interfacing is also there to help support
that too. So now one of the other things I realize is as I made all of these t-shirt
choices, not all t-shirts are actually created the same. Most are silkscreened but some are
nowadays these really cool iron ons. But iron ons really shouldn’t be ironed on again
on the front side so I just got in the habit of ironing most of my work from the back.
That way if one of my t-shirts was an iron on design I wasn’t placing the iron directly
on that transfer sheet that was created for the logo. So first I’ve got my seam nice
this way. Now I can flip it back over so it looks beautiful like that. And the first thing I’m going to do is I’m
going to manipulate off these edges. So I’m using a lot of the shirt that was already
made as my straight line so I can just continue that cut there. And I’m severely right handed
so we’re just going to do it this way. Here’s a fun trick to show you if I can hold still
long enough, right? If I can take the line here on that seam and this line. Look how
square that looks. Look how sharp that looks. So now I’m going to go ahead and trim that
off just like this. And then what I do is I grab the piece that I intended to attach
it to. So let’s say we want to put that blue piece up in here now, ok? So with this
I”m going to take and eyeball and make some new decisions. If I place this just like this
I personally am going to feel like I just missed the seam allowance where those two
lines didn’t come together perfectly if I have that lined up. So what I really want
to now do is I want to manipulate this and cheat it down a little ways so that it looks
like it was intentional. So just like I put that strip onto the block I can put this block
onto the column I’ve already built the exact same way. I want to double check one thing
though. When my seam allowance comes up here I don’t want it to fall into my logo design.
So right now I’m going to cheat it back a little bit, make sure I’m cool. And then
I’m going to go ahead and flip this over just like this. And then I would bring it
to the sewing machine and begin to manipulate these seams as well. Let’s talk about quilting a little bit while
we’re putting this last column on. And here’s why, because as I start to sew over the seams
where the sashing met the blocks a lot of t-shirt quilters will try to open those seams
up to try to facilitate stitch in the ditch style quilting which is something we do in
a lot of t-shirt quilts. As you can see this seam approaching here, I don’t worry about
that because I like free motion. And I’m going to stitch near the ditch to secure everything.
But I most likely do more free motion work around the design. So I just let that seam
just fall to one side the way it was pressed. And now we’ll sew through here. Again at
a nice medium pace. And now we’ll be ready to go ahead and do the same thing. Let’s
press this seam over this way. Oops I just did exactly the opposite of what I just trying
to show you. Sometimes I think so much about what I want to say I forget what I’m actually
really doing here. Hopefully you’ll forgive me. We are all human here at Man Sewing. Alright
so there we’ve got that seam allowance. And if you are all on your very best behavior
I promise to come back later and talk more about machine quilting and free motion quilting
on t-shirt quilts. I’ll make up this whole quilt for us and we’ll quilt it together.
I think that would be a lot of fun. But first we’ve got to build the quilt. So that’s
what we’re talking about today. Back here you can see the same thing is going on so
I’m going to do the same trick I did earlier. Here I have a line across here, there’s
my corner. I can go ahead and trim this and this. Did I get that first cut? I’m not
very left handed, we’ve already mentioned that, ok. So that’s trimmed down and my
column just keeps growing and growing. And I bring in my next column. And the way I love to design is I just manipulate
as I go. Manipulate as I go because if at all possible follow me to the quilt back here.
Here’s what I really want to show you some fun ideas, ok? First if we look at the whole
quilt you really don’t see many columns. If you look really closely you see a couple
of major rows going throughout the quilt. But look at this, this is what I love. There’s
four squares that are the same size put together to make like a four patch and then that four
patch comes together and manipulates into the same size square here. So this quilt itself
was actually designed with using the squares and bigger blocks that were all equal sizes.
Where mine I build each square by adding sashing as I go to manage it. Mostly because I’m
using just a few different designs in my shirts and this will make more character in the all
over design. So to sum it all up for you today. The basic techniques you need to know is you
must stabilize your t-shirts so they’re super easy to work with. Your whole t-shirt
was purchased for the design itself so therefore that becomes the fabric so make sure you treat
the design with respect and get it the way you need it, whether that’s using your ruler
or you’re just eyeballing and manipulation techniques, right? Enjoy putting it all together
and then remember it is a super snuggly. These are quilted in on the couches so on the back
of the quilts we often use something like minky which is on the back of this one. It
gives a bunch of wonderful character. Or I also love some of these fantastic flannels
because the feel of the flannel matches the feel of the t-shirt and puts it all together
and makes a fantastic gift item for those people that love the t-shirts as much as you
loved them. So I know it’s a lot of technical info and a little bit of sewing fun today
here at Man Sewing. We appreciate you encouraging all of these new ideas. The bell has rung
so it is time for me to sign off. We’ll catch you next time right here at Man Sewing. Thanks for being a Man Sewing fan. It’s
great to have you out there encouraging me to create fantastic new content. If you’ve
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