Having just finished my fourth half marathon yesterday
{phew, more on that later!}
and having been a sorority girl in college,
I have my fair share of t-shirts I don't have enough days in the year to wear!
I know many of you have seen the t-shirt quilts and maybe some of you have been tempted to make them.
I'm happy to have Carolyn from Sweet Boater Chick as a guest post as part of my small blog guest post series to explain the process of making a t-shirt quilt and a pillow.
Hi I'm Carolyn and I blog over at Sweet Boater Chick. On my blog I share many quilts and projects that I put together along with family events and fun times with my two nephews. And if you were wondering, the name of my blog comes from my love of white water kayaking.
One type of quilt that I tend to be asked to make for friends and family is the t-shirt quilt. This is one of the quilts that I have created with the method I am going to share with you today. It is created with all different race t-shirts.
I am going to share my method of making this quilt, but this time I am going to make a pillow. You will need;
1 or more t-shirts
lightweight or sheer weight fusible interfacing
cotton fabric for sashing and the back of the pillow
plain white fabric for the back between the layers
cotton batting
To start the project you want to do a rough cut of the t-shirt, leaving a large amount around the design so you can trim to the size you need later. Next decide your layout if you are using more than one t-shirt. (It is the same if you are working on a quilt)
Take one of the t-shirt pieces and fusible interfacing to the back, make sure not to press directly on the design from the front, I always press the interfacing on t-shirts from the back. The interfacing makes the t-shirt more stable and easier to work with. After adding the interfacing trim the t-shirt to the size you need for your design. I usually do this in steps, all interfacing then all trimming.
Once it is trimmed I add my sashing. The pink is cut 2 inches wide and the blue is cut 2.5 inches. It is easy to add width to your pieces with the sashings. Press the seams away from the t-shirt, this will make it easy to secure it to your backing later. Put each t-shirt and sashing block on 100% cotton batting, baste it with pins, and trim around it.
The next step is to quilt the t-shirt. I know that there is no back yet, but this makes it a lot easier when making a quilt. I did free motion squiggles on the t-shirt, around the outside of the design on the yellow and just squiggles on the white smaller t-shirts pieces. I then sewed the pink and blue together using a half inch seam allowance.
The half inch is important for pressing the seams open, which you want to do when sewing the t-shirt blocks together.
Next, add the white backing to cover the batting. Stitch in the ditch between the t-shirt and sashing in the blocks to secure the backing. On the edges, I serge or zigzag the layers together and now it is all ready to add the pillow back.
I did a simple envelope closure on this pillow, the two sections of the closure overlap 3 inches.
Flip it right side you, stuff it with a pillow form (or in my case a quilt that I folded up), and ta-da you have a fun t-shirt pillow. (I took off the pink because I decided it was too long). I can see this fun pillow on the spare bed for when my nephew, Matt, stays over. He loves all things space.
I hope you enjoyed my tutorial and stop over to see the other projects I have on my blog.
Thank you so much Rachel for the opportunity to guest post here on your blog!
Isn't that fun?!
Go spend some time over on Carolyn's blog and be inspired!
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