Making a T-Shirt Quilt Start to Finish using Back Fabric as Binding! (markers in the show notes)

hi guys monica here with the auburn hill homestead today's video is all about a t-shirt quilt making it from beginning to end i'm going to go through and show you all the equipment that you'll need all the material that you'll need and go through the whole process of sewing it so that you can end up with a t-shirt quilt that is a great gift for someone in your life [Music] the getting into the equipment that we'll need obviously a sewing machine your iron and ironing board those are must haves really for any sewing project [Music] quilting needles pins you want to make sure you get the thicker ones be longer because once we get into the meat of the project it's you're going to need the thicker ones regular scissors and also pinking shears for when we're cutting that back fabric this will keep it from fraying a seam ripper is always a must-have and a disappearing ink pen this is going to be a big help too a sewing ruler i just use this for all my projects so that's just again one of the must haves in your pile when we get into the actual portion of the quilting here you are going to need to change from your regular walking foot to your quilting foot that hopefully came with your machine again we're going to be getting into some thicker fabric and that padding and you'll need that walking foot that special walking foot to get through it all when you are sewing the t-shirts together obviously you're going to need a ball head needle this the ball head needle has a special end to it that gets through that jersey material that's otherwise if you use just a regular needle it's going to leave holes in it and potentially rip the fabric and you don't want that obviously so make sure you have your ballpoint ball head needle on your sewing machine um then the biggest things we need this is like what typically a lot of quilters just have in their supplies but it's definitely going to be very helpful for this t-shirt quilt is a rotary cutter this will just let you zip right through and keep even edges cutting the t-shirt panels out on for the front however be very careful these are extremely sharp so when you use a rotary cutter obviously extremely sharp you don't want to just do it on a table so you need a rotary cutting mat and the final thing to really help us out and keep those front panel squares perfect and even is it's a special plexiglas cutout it's called t-shirt transformation it's kind of hard to see here there we go but it comes for 10 inch panels 12 inch panels or 15 inch panels and it has little holes all around the side that you can mark through and then you line up and cut it on your rotary board with your rotary cutter so in addition to all your regular supplies we need the actual materials for the project you're going to need like i said 24 t-shirts panels so not necessarily t-shirts if you have one that's front back that's two panels but 24 panels total in addition you're going to need a backing fabric you're also going to want to either get this in extra wide which fabric stores like joanne they have them in extra wide and that's what i do just to make it easier on myself because this is also going to need to go beyond the front panel because we're going to end up using the size of this backing material as our binding which we'll get to at the end of the video but i opt for the extra wide flannel if not you'd have to get regular size flannel the 36 inch and you're going to need to sew them down the middle to double it up so it's just an extra step in the process if that's how you want it to do it and then as far as the quilting material goes i opt for some thinner quilting probably about half inch just because we've got t-shirts we've got flannel backing there's plenty of warmth there this just adds a nice little pad to it but it's not making it super thick and it can get through the machine okay last you need interfacing this interfacing is not super thick this is the thinnest stuff they sell and it's like 99 cents a yard it's not bad but the reason that we need it is not to hold the form like interfacing typically does it is because t-shirts are jersey material and they stretch right so they stretch more this way one way than another way so you're going to take that interfacing to keep this stretch from happening and that way when it goes through the machine it doesn't pull and it keeps its correct size the first step in the project is to separate out the front of the t-shirt from the back of the t-shirt um you might think why is she doing that it seems like an extra step just put the t-shirt transformer on it and cut it out that way but when you have a double layer things get wrinkled they're not in the right spot and it can just lead to poor uh sizing when it comes to making the quilt so it's best i find especially then if you're going to be using the back panel too you need to separate them however it is just best to go along the side seams and cut each t-shirt through and i mean you don't have to be exact on this just try to get as close as you can and then when it comes time to measure this out with the t-shirt transformer you now have a nice flat t-shirt to go ahead and lay that transformer over on to the next step we're going to be ironing the interface onto the t-shirt i like to do that before we cut out the t-shirt on the grid with the t-shirt transformer because it will uh maintain its shape and size if the interface is already on it and if you cut it out and then go to put the interface on it the t-shirt will get all stretched out and it will not maintain its correct size so i'm just going to cut a square of the interface out and then we're going to put the t-shirt right side down and you're going to take the t-shirt here and test it which way does it stretch most this one is stretching most left to right side to side so i'm going to take the interface and test it which way does it stretch okay so it doesn't stretch it all side to side but it does stretch up and down so i want to make sure that whichever way the t-shirt does stretch the interface doesn't stretch that's what will keep the shape of the t-shirt once it's cut that is an important step to do smooth it out iron set to medium high heat and hold with your hand and just keep moving it around don't stay in one spot for long and it doesn't take very long at all and then you can check it it is fused down there this t-shirt is now good to go and ready to get cut out on the t-shirt transformer so we've got the t-shirt transformer on we're going to line it up right underneath the collar and center it as best as we can we don't want to include the collar in our t-shirt quilt you can use like i said earlier disappearing ink or really whatever ink you want because you're going to have a multitude of colored t-shirts so you're going to run you can't use the same color for everything and just go ahead and mark out all the 12 and a half inch guides and then when you lift the t-shirt transformer you are ready to go ahead and start cutting okay once you are marked out you can go ahead and grab the rotary cutter mat put that underneath and then you can use the edge of the t-shirt transformer or the at the quilting supply section of your local hobby store they have other straight edges for cutting out quilt patterns and whatnot you can use one of those i'm going to go ahead and just use the t-shirt transformer and make sure you hold it down tight take your rotary cutter engage it watch those fingers and for that reason right there go ahead and slide it on down it just cuts right through a couple more here and we've got one more to go there we go now we have the perfect 12 and a half inch square even on all edges okay all our t-shirt panels are cut out we're going to go ahead and lay them out and figure out the pattern that we want them in so now we've got it all laid out four panels across six panels down you wanna just make sure that when you're laying out due to the binding you have panels that have more room on the bottom for the binding down there and as much as possible up top and then on each side because we're going to be coming over about an inch with the binding so i've got my first two panels here and we're just going to put right sides together line up the edges the edge there and then take a couple of our quilting pins and just pin them in place and get ready to start sewing needles so that i will be doing a quarter inch seam allowance at the beginning we're going to do front stitch for a couple back stitch and then front stitch through and then at the end backstitch again so that we can just make sure those seams are nice and secure and our first two panels are done so when you have your first row of four panels sewn together you're going to go ahead and finger press open all the seams and then take your iron and iron them flat this will allow for the seams to fit together and lay nice and straight when it comes time to sew your rows together okay so we've got all our panels sewn into the six rows now it's time to start sewing the rows together you're going to be attaching the bottom of one row to the top of the other so you're going to flip the bottom up and then make sure that you are lining up your two seams so we have a seam here and a seam here you're going to line them up and pin them together like so you're going to do that for each one and then we will work out from there and pin some more so that we have a nice secure fabric to go through the sewing machine once you have all your rows sewn together it's time to start laying out your layers as you can see you need a large flat space like a clean floor to accomplish this take your time and work out any and all wrinkles [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] once everything is all laid out it's time to start pinning you're going through three layers so this is where those long quilting pins come in handy i pin all four corners each quarter panel twice and the middle panels once [Music] [Music] now it's time to cut off the excess quilt batting make sure when you're cutting you go right along the edge of the t-shirts then preferably using pinking shears cut off the excess backing fabric we are good to go to start sewing when you cut out you want to make sure that you leave enough extra around all edges that you can have two to three inches to work with i go ahead and just cut out enough and leave some extra and then i'm going to be putting this through the machine sewing each one of these rows down the t-shirt seams we're going to go vertically and horizontally so we're going to end up on the back that'll be 24 squares to see too and then once those are sewn together it's easier to trim up the edges exactly for how much we need now before we start sewing make sure to switch out your presser foot for a quilting presser foot since we're going to be sewing backing quilting padding and the top panels all together if you use your regular presser foot things are just going to get jammed up and stuck [Music] [Music] [Music] now that we've got our backing fabric with the quilting and top panel all sewn together and you can see the nice quilts all around we're going to go ahead and start marking out the edges so that we can get the back fabric used as our binding so the first thing we're gonna do is be marking two inches out and then we're gonna draw a line connecting them all using our rotary cutter and the rotary cutting mat go ahead and we'll cut out two inches all around the quilt so so [Music] now that the backing fabric is trimmed to two inches wide we are going to start ironing and folding it into place first fold over the fabric one inch so that it butts up to your t-shirt panels and press it then fold over another inch covering the t-shirt panels and finally make sure to securely pin the binding into place okay so now that we have our first row folded over onto our t-shirts we're going to go ahead and work on the corner so the first thing we need to do is fold a triangle just so it's butted up right in this corner here like so steam press it down okay and then we're going to go back onto this new side fold over that one inch butting up to our panels press it down and then fold over again and as you can see we have a nice little corner here that is now part of the binding for our quilt and i always pin the corners in place all four corners to make sure everything stays where it needs to before we get under the sewing machine okay so i've gone ahead and ironed down the whole side here and we're gonna go ahead and do this next corner again flip over into a triangle press it down and then flip over one inch press it down and then flip over onto your t-shirt panel and there we go we got a nice corner again do a quick steam to set it and just make sure you're tucking the t-shirt panel underneath holding everything in place nice and secure there there we go now that we're onto our last side we're going to be finishing and what you want to do is do both corners at the same time on this last side so we have it folded over twice so we're over our t-shirt on both edges we're going to do a triangle stamp it down do a triangle steam it down and then fold drop the iron fold over to this one inch steam it down you see in a pattern here steam it down steam is your friend and it comes to this binding and then we're going to fold it over fold it over one last time and you should have your two finished beautiful mitered corners that we will pin this all down and we'll be good to go now we're ready to sew the binding down and this is the very last step of putting together our t-shirt quilt so as you can see here with my presser foot still my quilting presser foot i am running right on the edge i have the needle centered and it is just going to be going right along the edge and we're just going to do this around the whole quilt and then we'll be all done so here is our finished quilt as you can see binding is all done using back fabric and the final dimensions of the quilt is 47 inches wide by 70 inches long if you've liked what you've seen go ahead and hit that subscribe button and i hope you all have a great rest of your week

Channel: Auburn Hill Homestead

Views: 5,123

Keywords: Making a T-Shirt Quilt Start to Finish using Back Fabric as Binding! (markers in the show notes), T-shirt quilt, back fabric binding, T-shirt quilt for beginners, T-shirt quilt start to finish, quilt with back fabric binding

Id: UKCkoY8_KO8

Length: 25min 12sec (1512 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 13 2021