T-shirt Quilt Basics

Take your quilting skills to the next level by turning a lifetime of memories into a striking, structural work of art! Designed specifically for sewists who already know their way around a machine, this intermediate workshop skips the absolute basics like sewing a quarter inch seam, cutting fabrics, and operating your sewing machine and dives straight into the design strategies and required materials behind building a flawless T-shirt quilt top -- approximate size will be between 45" and 60" square.

Instead of a standard "cookie-cutter" layout, you will master the technical nuances of handling stretchy knits and manipulate fabric like a pro using two distinct layout philosophies.

What You Will Learn

This course focuses entirely on the design layout, precise cutting, and structural engineering required to build a well-balanced quilt top full of memories:

• The Regular Grid Method: Perfect for creating a clean, gallery look. You will learn the mathematics of incorporating precision sashing and cornerstones, managing seam bulk at intersections, and ensuring uniform tension across jersey-to-cotton joins.

• The Collage (Improv) Method: A true puzzle-piecing masterclass. You will learn how to map out shirts of wildly different graphic sizes and piece them together seamlessly without losing the structural integrity or squaring of the overall quilt.

• T-Shirt Harvesting: Learn how to "harvest" the important parts of the shirt quickly in order to spend more time piecing!

Advanced Skills Covered

• Stabilization: Matching the right lightweight fusible interfacing (like Pellon SF 101 or 911) to varying knit weights without making the quilt top stiff.

• Complex Layout Mapping: Using graph paper, color, and scale across the top for a great result

• Bulk Seam Management: Piecing techniques to tame thick screen prints and heavy seams so your final quilt top lies flat for quilting.

By the end of this workshop, you will leave with a fully pieced, structurally sound quilt top and a toolkit of advanced drafting and piecing skills you can apply to any future improvisational or memory quilt project.

Required Materials List

• T-Shirts: Bring 15 to 25 t-shirts.

• Lightweight Fusible Interfacing: 5 - 10yards of lightweight, iron-on woven stabilizer (such as Pellon SF101 or 906F).

• Rotary Cutter & Mat: A sharp 45mm rotary cutter and an 18" x 24" or larger self-healing mat.

• Acrylic Quilting Rulers: A large square ruler (such as a 12.5" square or 15" square) for blocking, plus a standard 6" x 24" rectangular ruler for strip cutting.

• Piecing Thread: High-quality 50wt or 40wt thread (such as Aurifil or Gutermann) in a neutral color.

• Marking & Pinning Tools: Sharp glass-head pins, fabric clips, and a reliable fine-line marking pen or chalk wheel.

• Optional Sashing/Accent Fabric: 1.5 to 2 yards of premium quilting cotton if you plan to execute a traditional grid with sashing borders. This can be purchased or gathered after we figure out your quilt layout.