T-Shirt Quilt, part 1

I've been working on a t-shirt quilt for Matt.  He's taking it to college with him in the fall.  I have been collecting t-shirts for 4 years, volunteering at events, and *sigh* paying for t-shirts to make into a quilt for him to take to college.  I began working on it last week when he reported to camp.  These are the steps involved in getting the shirts cut into squares.

I measured every t-shirt that I had for the collection.  There are several variations on t-shirt quilts, from those that are just blocks, to those that cut out big and small pieces of t-shirts, and somehow manage to make it into one gorgeous quilt.

I looked at the t-shirts and decided that I wanted to cut them all into similar size blocks, and that I was going to alternate the blocks with a solid color fabric.  After measuring the designs on the fronts and backs of all of the shirts, I decided that I would cut the squares to be 14".  With a 1/4" seam allowance on all sides, the final size of the squares will be 13 1/2".

So, after taking a deep breath, I began cutting the t-shirts.

Here, I am cutting one of the shirts.  There is no side seam on any of these shirts, so I am attempting to go pretty much straight up the side of the shirt, with the goal of ending my cut at the seam on the underarm of the sleeve.

Don't know how I did it, but I did!  Here, you can see that the scissors are on track to hit the bottom of the sleeve, right at the underarm seam.  I then cut around the sleeve, so that the sleeve separates from the shirt, and cut across the top, through the crew neck to liberate the two halves.

Just the front of the shirt.  The sleeves are gone.  I went ahead and left the ribbing for the crew neck on the shirts because I'll cut them off when I measure out and cut the square down.

The shoulder seam.  I cut right next to the seam, across to the crew neck.

 

 

Measuring across the back.  Unfortunately, when I cut these shirts, I only had a tape measure with me, and not my cutting mat or rotary cutter!  I did my best to make certain that the squares were as close to 14" as possible. 

 

 

Before I iron on the interface on the back, I will double check the measurements on the square to make sure that it measures out correctly. 

 

 

NEXT UP:

Cutting the fabric squares, ironing the interfacing.