Welcome to week 4 of my 6-week guide to making a simple T-shirt quilt.
So far we have gathered our supplies, cut the T-shirts, and ironed on interfacing. Today we are going to sew all of the T-shirt blocks together.
The first thing you need to do is to lay out all of your T-shirt blocks and decide where they will each go.
I have thirty 12 1/2 inch T-Shirt blocks so I arranged them in a 5×6 grid.
I find this task to be one of the hardest of the whole T-shirt quilt-making process because it is always tricky to figure out where to put the blocks.
Once you have the blocks arranged the way you want you are ready to sew.
I like to sew one row at a time and then move on to the next row and so on.
To sew the blocks together you will need to use a 1/4 inch seam allowance.
Here is the method I used to sew the blocks together.
First, I placed the second block on top of the first and sewed along the right side.
Then, I took the fourth block and placed it on top of the third and sewed along the right side as well.
Next, I sewed block two and three together along the right side.
Finally, I sewed the fifth block to the fourth block along the right side.
Clear as mud, right? 🙂
If all goes according to plan you should end up with 6 rows (or however many you have) with 5 T-shirt blocks in each row like in the picture below.
If you will notice I messed up in the 4th row and flip-flopped a couple of blocks from what my original plan was. I decided not to rip out my stitches and just went with it. Since the T-shirts are pretty random I think it will be fine.
The next step is to sew the rows together using a 1/4 inch seam allowance.
I sewed rows 1 and 2 together, rows 3 and 4 together, and rows 5 and 6 together.
I used pins for this part and lined up each seam.
One thing to remember about quilting that is different that sewing clothing is that you don’t open the seams. You keep them closed and alternate the direction that the seams go.
So, you want to fold the seam on the top to the right and the seam on the bottom to the left.
Now, you should have three sets of two rows of T-shirt blocks.
The last step is to sew the pairs of rows together. Again, use a 1/4 inch seam allowance.
If all went well you should have all of your T-shirt blocks sewn together like in the picture above.
The picture below shows what the back side of my T-shirt blocks look like.
I really enjoyed this week’s task because all of the work I had done in the three previous weeks has come to life.
Next week I will be showing you how to put the quilt batting and backing fabric on and how to quilt by stitching in the ditch.
How to Make a T-shirt Quilt
- Week 1: Gather Supplies
- Week 2: Cut the T-Shirts
- Week 3: Interfacing
- Week 4: Sew the T-shirt Blocks Together
- Week 5: Quilting
- Week 6: Quilt Binding
