T-Shirt Quilt (Take Two)

In case you missed it, I've been out for the past nine months due to homelessness, marriage, and graduation, so here's an update on what I've been up to!

In February, I posted about the T-Shirt Quilt my fiance and I were making as our first craft together.  Well, during April and May, when I was thrown in an empty dorm building, I found an empty room and managed to set up shop and sew.  I finished it, but I had a lot of snafuus along the way, and so I'm here to give advice to those looking to make their own.

The first thing that I did is cut and pin all the t-shirts into squares that were 20" by 10".  For a few of them, I cut two shirts each 10.5" by 10" and put them on top of each other as a single square in the quilt.

I made the quilt six shirts wide and four shirts tall, which is almost exactly the size of a queen-sized quilt, but I'm not sure I would have done it the same way if I were to do it again.  I don't know.  Play around with it!

After I had all the squares cut, fronts and backs, I sewed across the rows.  Now, because I wasn't blogging at this point, I don't have process pictures, so I'll try my best to make them.

The first thing I did was sew each block that was made of two mini-shirts together to make a full block.  First, I sewed the two t-shirt fronts together, right sides together, with about a half-inch seam allowance (t-shirts fray alot!).  I did the same for the backs, and then pressed the seam allowances outward. 

I repeated that process, sewing the t-shirt fronts and backs together all the way across a row, making two long strips of t-shirts that would lie on top of each other.  When each strip was done, I ironed the seam allowances outward, to lie flat away from the seam.

After I had all of the rows done, I attached them to each other using the same method.  The front half of row one would be folded downward onto the top half of row two and sewed across with a half-inch seam allowance with the right sides together.  Because the seam allowances from the previous step were pressed out, if you were to look at the wrong sides, they would look something like this:

Once you've got two massive quilt-sized sheets, you line them up and attempt to sew over the edges like this:

I sewed all the way across each seam on both sides, sewing through the front, back, and both seam allowances.  The only problem is that on the back, it didn't come out quite as well.  Oh well.

I also didn't line my quilt with batting, which I could have done to make it fluffier.  To finish the edges, I simply sewed black bias tape all the way around.

Have you ever made a T-Shirt Quilt?  What process did you use?  How did it turn out?  Let me know in the comments!