Homemade Tee Shirt Quilt

I've been wanting to make a tee shirt quilt for the longest time and Tony's girl friend Alex made one over the summer that turned out so good that I decided I had to do it.  It was really quite simple and it's a great way to use old tee shirts.  Chablis and I spent an hour going through all our drawers and collecting the tee shirts we wanted to use.  I had no idea we had so many tee shirts, and we tried to pick ones with great graphics or ones that had sentimental meaning.  Man, I wish I still had all my really cool tee shirts from the 70's - I am just sick about that.

Once we collected our shirts we had to cut them to size.  I decided on 12" x 12" and I borrowed the square form that Alex and her mom used.  They had a great idea - they used the top of a take out pizza box.  It made a nice sturdy form.  I just laid the form on top of the tee shirts and cut my squares out.  I ended up using 30 squares for mine and Chablis cut 35 squares for hers.

Next I bought fusible interfacing for mine.

This is the kind I bought....

And I had a 50% off coupon from Jo-Ann Fabrics - Score!!

Honestly, this was the part I hated about the whole thing.  Ironing the fusible interfacing on the back of each square was a pain in the butt.  You're supposed to use a damp towel and press it over the interfacing in order to fuse it to the material.  I quickly got aggravated with that whole process, so I put my iron on the steam setting and fused it without the damp towel.   It seemed to work ok.

Then I used my handy dandy table top sewing machine and stitched all the squares together with a 1/2" seam...

 

Afterwards I ironed open all the seams and here is how the back looks with the fusible interfacing on it....

Then I sewed a huge piece of nice soft fleece fabric on the back and here's my finished tee shirt quilt....

Chablis made hers a little differently.  She didn't want to spend the extra money on the fusible interfacing and once she saw how much work it was to iron it on, she was really glad she didn't buy it.  Since I did the sewing of all the squares, I will tell you that sewing the squares with the interfacing was much easier because the material was stiffer.  But as far as the finished product goes, there isn't much difference.  My quilt feels a little heavier because of the interfacing, but hers is much softer.  So it's a personal preference for you if you decide to use the interfacing or not.  Here's her finished quilt and she used a piece of fleece for the backing as well....

These tee shirt quilts are a great project.  They were extremely easy to make and if you're looking for a great gift for someone, then raid their dresser for some cool graphic tee shirts and whip one up.