Craft Time: T-Shirt Quilt

Ok. So this is not exactly a current project. It is one that I finished about a year ago. Making a T-shirt quilt had been on my bucket list for many, many years. I had started making one with all of my high school-related shirts, but lost interest and ended up throwing everything away. (my one regret in life... jk).

Once I bought my sewing machine last year (using gift cards from our wedding), I went straight to work on a quilt using shirts from my college days. And I love it! --- I have it wrapped around me right now! 

Here's what I used:

• T-shirts cut into rectangles (other options: squares & triangles)
• quilt batting -- enough for the area of your quilt
  
• comfy fabric for the back --- enough for the area of your quilt (I used jersey knit fabric because it is so comfy!)
• embroidery floss to connect all the fabric layers
• and of course, thread & a sewing machine

Here's What I did: (I wish I had more pictures to show.

• organize the t-shirt squares in a way that I liked (I wanted to stagger colors while keeping someone of a theme for each row [i.e. RA shirts, mission trips, wing shirts, etc]).
• pin the squares together by column & sew seams
• sew the columns together
• keeping that layer with the fabric designs faced up, lay the back layer then the batting on top.
• make sure the edges of each layer are aligned
• pin the three layers together
• machine sew around the whole thing EXCEPT for about the length of one square
• flip the quilt inside out through the opening you left
• hand sew the opening closed.
• using the embroidery floss, connect the three layers together at each intersection of the squares
• and be comfy & nostalgic

(because this was my first quilt & I am pretty inexperienced, my "quilting" method is not too advanced, but it is a great tutorial for beginners, to try something more advanced in the quilting world, click here to jump to a tutorial by one of my favorite bloggers) 

Click here for a list of Easy Sewing Projects, a post I wrote for Little House Living.