T-Shirt Quilt Along - Video 1 - Here we go cutting & stabilizing shirts!

hello you guys I am Lisa with Lisa Cape and quilts I'm so excited today is video one of our t-shirt quilt along every Sunday I'll be releasing a new video and we're gonna walk you step-by-step on how to make a very simple basic t-shirt quilts just ready to get started [Music] first things first let's have a little chat about the different types of shirts that you can put into your quilt I have a stack of sweatshirts that belonged to my Nana and these are also some of her t-shirts I do have a couple of very lightweight knit shirts that she loved to wear and it remind me of her and so I'm going to include them in even though they're not technically a t-shirt but it also will show you how easy that any types of the materials that we're using here today can be included into your quilts I have 20 different shirts if you have shirts that you want to use that have logos on the front and back you'll need less but altogether you'll need a total number of 20 different blocks so grab your shirts and your pair of scissors yes we're using scissors for this part and I'm gonna bring you over to the cutting table and I'm going to show you how I cut apart both a long sleeve and a short sleeve shirt getting them ready for the stabilizer all right we are set up at the cutting table I have my scissors and I have my ruler this is the template ruler that we're going to be using it's from Omni grid it is the 15 inch ruler so if you have this it's kind of handy to have around while you're cutting your shirts you know how much extra material you're leaving yourself on the sides the first thing I like to do is to go ahead and cut my sleeves if I have a long-sleeve shirt we're going to go ahead and get rid of any of the extra material there and I just start by cutting away from the seam straight up okay we have gotten rid of our long sleeves the next thing we're going to do is we're going to cut along this top seam right through the collar straight across all right so we have separated the shirt at the top now because this is a sweatshirt it's easier for me to go ahead and get rid of this little ribbed band at the bottom so I'm gonna go ahead and cut that off real quick when you're cutting t-shirts you will not have to do that part and now it'll be really simple to cut straight up the seams to do that I like to grab the shirt from the center of the front and the center of the back and open the shirt so that now this is the front Center and this is the back Center and we're going to cut right up the side seam of our shirt separating the back from the front okay this is our back move that to the side and now you can see we have just the front of the sweatshirt with plenty of room to work with this will be our finished block you can see we have extra will do one more sweatshirt together we're going to put this over into the pile that we're using again we're gonna cut off the sleeves away from the seam the reason I say that is because some sweatshirts are smaller if you're working with smaller shirts sometimes if the sweatshirt is smaller you're gonna need some of the sleeve material that goes beyond this seam here we have plenty of room to work with with these shirts but sometimes like I said if you do have a smaller shirt you'll want some of this material here so cut away from your seam when you're cutting off your sleeves we're going to go ahead and cut this top seam we'll cut off this ribbed band and again we're grabbing from the center of the front center of the back open that back up and cut right up your cytosine again we have the front of the sweatshirt that you're going to use now let's take a look at doing some t-shirts this is the t-shirt we're going to use I'm going to save this small front logo for maybe another project down the road and I'll be using the logo from the back again we're going to start by cutting along the top seam because this is a short sleeve shirt I'm not going to even bother cutting anything off of the sleeves and we're going to open it at the bottom grabbing the two centers and cutting right up the side seams I like to cut mine individually opening up the bottom so that I can see exactly where I'm cutting I have cut shirts before where I just cut both seams at the same time and that the the front of the shirt was underneath and I cut right into a logo luckily that was one of my own t-shirt quilts I was working on and unfortunately after that I could not use that logo so now I just cut both seams separately it only takes a second but it saves you some heartache down the road and opening up at the front of the shirt you can see we have plenty of space for that logo and we will do the knit shirt that I showed to begin with this shirt you could use either side they're both the same you could use both sides again it's a short sleeve so we're not going to worry about cutting off the sleeves we'll just start up at the top grabbing from the center again exposing the side seams and cutting straight up so this is how simple it is to cut apart your shirts I would use the same technique no matter what type of shirt it is even if it's a button front shirt it's still the same I would button the buttons first before you cut it apart it makes your life way more simple but you'll see starting up at the top and cutting apart then opening to the sides and cutting those seams I'm going to go ahead and cut all of my shirts apart and that next we're going to meet at the iron and I'm going to show you how you stabilize your shirts we have all of our shirts cut apart and before we go to the iron I wanted to talk a minute about the stabilizer that I'm going to be using on the backside of our shirts my favorite is the pill on p44 fusible interfacing this can be found at Joanne's and I personally like to purchase it by the bolt and it is 99 cents a yard I like to use a half off coupon on mine and that saves you quite a bit of money for this quilt you will need about 10 yards of interfacing and what I like to do before I even go to the iron is go ahead and precut all of my sheets of stabilizer so that when I get to the iron I'm just pressing so you'll see here I have a twenty sheets they're already pre-cut from our bolts and I like to give myself some working room because when the shirt is upside down at the pressing surface sometimes you cannot really see where that logo is so if you give yourself some extra stabilizer more than the actual size of the block that you're going to cut that allows you some play room when you get to go cutting your logo out so that if you have to move to one side or the other you're still within that stabilizer on the backside of your shirts and we all know that logos are not always printed in the center of your shirt I've done a many of quilts and the logos are off-centered by a little bit and so we just want to make sure that when we cut our stabilizer we give ourself plenty of working room I have all 20 sheets and I am warming up the iron and we're gonna start pressing here we are at the iron we have our iron set at a cotton setting and I have a pressing sheet which is just a scrap piece of muslin that I have laying around and we have our shirts cut apart and our stabilizer is all ready to go we're ready to go ahead and stabilize our t-shirts first thing I do grab your t-shirt make sure that the pretty side or the side with the logo is facing down we're going to go ahead and then lay it flat out on our pressing surface and without stretching this shirt we're just going to make sure that all the wrinkles are out and everything is laying flat we're going to take our stabilizer now our stabilizer has two sides it has a smooth side and the other side is bumpy the bumpy side is the adhesive and that's the side that we're actually pressing to the back of our shirt we're going to lay that down flat on our shirt now the instructions do not call for the pressing sheet I just personally like to use it because it helps my iron move around a lot easier some stabilizers are different and this heat settings are different some of them if your iron is too hot will actually stick to the surface of your I've used this stabilizer now for over two years and so I don't find that that happens however I still like to use my pressing sheet when I'm ironing my stabilizer make sure that you read the instructions for whatever type of stabilizer you're using next we're going to take our iron and we are pressing our stabilizer now each one is different and called four different times that you actually heat set this I think the one that we're working with calls for five to ten seconds I could be wrong I don't know I've worked with this stabilizer so long that I just know how long to heat set everything what I actually like to do is once everything is kind of pressed in place it's turned the steam on and with my pressing sheet over everything it's going to protect my surface and that steam really helps bond the glue to the back side of my t-shirt and I'm not really dragging my iron over top ever over top of my material when I move I'm slightly lifting my iron up so it might look like I'm pressing or yeah pressing ironing however I'm lifting everything up and when I set it down that's when it's really resting on the t-shirt yep when you look at your stabilizer it should look like a solid sheet and at those little bumps that you could see before have disappeared and that's when you know that your stabilizer is really well bonded to your t-shirt material one thing is that I want to note is that down the road after we've cut our blocks if you cut down deeper to beer this part is actually loose you can always go back and reheat set that and adhere the adhesive to your shirt for now we're just pressing within this pressing surface so that is one shirt I would do a sweatshirt at this time you can see this one was cross stitched by my Nana it has all of the open stitching on the back that's perfectly fine you can use shirts that have sequence or beading on them the only thing that I would recommend is that any embellishments are not within the area that you're going to actually cut or within your seam allowance where you're going to actually sew so if your shirt does have the embellishments you're going to want to make sure when you're cutting your shirt to not position your square or your embellishments within a quarter inch seam allowance again the bumpy side is going down and without stretching our shirt we're just making sure everything is flat I turned the steam off and I'm just setting everything in place now that everything is tacked down I'll go then turn my steam on again I know that this method works for the type of stabilizer that I'm using if you're using something different you may not want to use the steam and although this seems like a long boring step in the process of doing your quilt if you have everything ready and set up to go this really doesn't take that long even though this stabilizer is very very lightweight it does a wonderful job of keeping all of your materials from stretching you know how the knits and the jerseys and sweatshirts material are very stretchy you know because they're the clothing this I really love this stabilizer for keeping all of that from stretching move that's hot it all looks very good we're ready to go ahead and move on to the next one and we'll do one warrants together we'll do another slash together again I do have a video where I go more extensively into the stabilizing that link is down below in the description box basically it is this simple you guys tack it down and then I like to use my steam irons like sorry about that you guys now I did have a friend of mine Jacqui she's going to be making her first t-shirt quilt ask me a question about softener in the wash when she is pre washing her shirts getting everything ready I always use softener in my laundry I have to because I have really sensitive skin and I like really soft clothes and I've never had an issue with washing my clothes and using the softener and then turning around and preparing my shirts and using them in a quilt so I'm sure that there are people who will say that they would not use softener I personally have never had an issue I don't have an issue with the stabilizers sticking to my shirts that have softener I've never had an issue sewing the blocks together for me I say if you like softener go ahead and use the softener in your wash when you're pre washing your shirts most definitely if you are using a brand new shirt for your quilt you will want to pre wash that shirt before you start in this process because a lot of those shirts have dyes in them and I've used like brand new Burgundy shirts and a quilt and at the end of the process when the quote was finished I watched the quilt and the burgundy shirt did bleed into some of the other squares and so definitely if you're using a new shirt go ahead and pre wash that and just like that you guys our third shirt is stabilized you can see how nice and flat it makes the shirt and there is no stretch within this wet shirt so even though it seems like a very tedious time-consuming process you'll most definitely want to use the stabilizer remember if you're using something different than what I'm using in my video today make sure you read the instructions and if you have any questions you guys I would be glad to help you out and to try to answer your questions leave them below in the comment section again you can jump over to Facebook and find me there at least the Cape and quilt I look forward to finishing these up and meeting you back here next Sunday where we're gonna start cutting out our blocks I will show you how to Center your logo use the template or the square ruler with a rotary cutter and if you don't have that I'm also going to show you how to cut out your blocks using just a straight edge ruler and your cutting mat so no matter what you are covered I hope you guys have a wonderful week I'm looking forward to the rest of this quilt along series you guys thanks for joining me in my first video and we will see you next week okay bye you guys

Channel: Lisa Capen Quilts

Views: 79,029

Keywords: tshirt quilt, quilt along, cutting shirts for quilt, deboning shirt, diy tshirt quilt, tshirt blanket, lisa capen quilts, quilting, quilt, quilt stabilizer, stabilizer, fusible stabilizer, pellon, pellon p44, quilt tutorial

Id: YAhu7Gp7BX4

Length: 25min 18sec (1518 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 14 2018