Hi! I’m not the most skilled seamstress but am planning to make some patchwork quilts out of my late brother’s aloha shirts (which I am taking apart). I promised to make one for each of my two kids—D needs a twin and S needs a queen.
I made basic patchwork quilts for them 30+ years ago, when both were in preschool and none since.
I’d appreciate any hints, tips, and suggestions. I’d like it to be VERY simple.
Thanks! I ordered an Ofla rotary cutter and have a self healing quilting mat. Also ordered 10 & 5” squares scheduled to arrive in 2 weeks.
What is the fabric content of the shirts?
Do you have a ruler to use with the rotary cutter and mat? The one I use is 5x24 inches, that’s pretty typical.
What are the 5 inch squares you ordered? Is it fabric squares to alternate with the shirt fabric?
Ordered the acrylic squares to slice up the fabric. Haven’t ordered any more fabric. I have an unused single sheet and queens set that I could use for backing. I haven’t bought any additional fabric nor have I bought batting yet. The fabric is pretty heavy cotton 60 polyester 40 or so, Reyn’s fabric and doesn’t wrinkle and has a nice body to it.
D helped pick out the shirts for her quilt—they’re different prints of blue.
S will be here with DIL in a week or so for another wedding and will have them help pick out the shirts to use for their quilt.
Before I make a quilt I plot it out on graph paper so I know how many pieces I need of each fabric and I can map out a layout so I know the math will work.
I’m happy to answer any specific questions you have.
Sorry, I misunderstood what the 10x5 inch squares were, that should be fine to use as a guide to cut your fabric without needing another ruler.
You may want to watch a few videos on how to use the rotary cutter and practice on some scrap fabric to get the hang of it. The biggest issue is usually the ruler slipping while you’re using the cutter.
Are you planning then to make a grid of 10x5 inch blocks?
That’s such a nice keepsake for your kids!
Any idea how you plan to quilt it when you’re done?
I was just going to make a grid of 10” blocks. If I get ambitious, once I’m done with their quilts, I may use the scraps to make 5” squares and make myself a quilt too. (There are a LOT of scraps from shirts when you have 10” squares.). Haha!
I guess I can go to the one remaining quilt shop in town and see what backings they have that might work, if people don’t think using sheets as backing is a good idea. I did use sheets for the quilts I made for them in preschool and thought I’d do it again, as we have nice sheets that are available and not used.
I ordered another ruler anyway, since if this turns out, my sibs may want to make or have quilts as well. We shall see how things turn out. Services that make quilts are pretty expensive and if I stick with large squares, it doesn’t seem THAT difficult.
The Hawaiian print fabric isn’t very stretchy, fortunately. It has a nice body.
Quilting generally uses quarter inch seams so you will lose a half inch of each square. You just want to keep that in mind when planning the overall size.
I found my sewing improved by leaps and bound when I started using better quality thread so if you go to the local quilt shop you might want to look at what they have. I use Aurifil and most quilt shops carry it. I like to use light or medium gray as a neutral when I’m sewing blue fabrics.
Making quilts out of t-shirts is really labor intensive. Cutting stretchy knit fabric is tricky so the fabric has be stabilized first with special interfacing. Then quilting through all the layers is heavy work, even if the quilt is quilted by machine. Machine needles dull quickly and you need to use a special heavy duty thread.
Also seconding the recommendation not to use sheets for backing. They are very tightly woven and are impossible to quilt through by hand and are tough to quilt through by machine.
Ideally your backing should be from the same type of fabric as the front. IOW, if the shirts are polyester fabric, the back should be polyester fabric. If the front is cotton, the backing should be cotton. This is so if there’s any fabric shrinkage, it’s in the same range. Also it makes laundering the quilt easier.
If you don’t want to buy new fabric for the backing, you can use your leftover fabric pieces from the front sewn together to make the backing. I do that all the time with my quilts. I just sew chunks of leftover fabric and unused quilt blocks from other projects to make the backing. A lady came do a class with our quilt guild and she saved even the tiniest pieces of scraps which she randomly pieced together to make her quilt backs.
Measuring and cutting are very important. It’s going to take you a long time to cut using the acrylic squares one at a time. If you can get longer strips out of the shirts, like a 5" x 20" strip, that might work better and then you can cut them down into 5 x 5. Make sure the blade in your rotary cutter is sharp.
Since the shirts are a poly blend, if you use cotton for any of it, make sure to preshrink the cotton as the shirt fabrics will not shrink any more and the cotton will. If you have it quilted on a long arm, the dense quilting will cut down on the shrinking a little but if you don’t preshrink, you’ll get puckers when it is washed. I think a long armer will be okay with a sheet backing. If you are doing it yourself on a home machine, it is harder to quilt on a sheet.
Most quilters use a 1/4" seem, but you can do 1/2" if you prefer; it makes the quilt heavier. You can do a 9 patch (or a 16), making blocks out of the 9 smaller squares and then alternate with a plain block or separate with sashing. There are a lot of free patterns, just google 9 patch.
Wow–so much to think about! Thanks for all of these ideas. I don’t have a longarm and will just be using a regular sewing machine that I bought during COVID to make masks when my old White broke. It is a Janome machine from Costco & pretty basic.
I have washed all bedding in very hot water and dried it, so it has been pre-shrunk if we decide to try using the sheets and backing.
Any sewing machine will work for piecing a quilt. It is in the finishing that the difficulties arise. Bedsheets work best as backing for tied quilts. If you want quilted quilts, either pay someone to do the quilting on a dedicated quilting machine, using the backing that person specifies, or hand quilt using a fabric of similar weight to the the fabrics used for the front of the quilt.
Once you have the top pieced and sewn together then you can think about quilting it. I personally find quilting even a twin size on a home sewing machine more akin to wrestling than to sewing. You can have it quilted by someone who owns a long arm and provides that service. In my area it runs about $80 for a queen size, well worth it in my opinion. Then you can do the binding to finish it off.
Where do you live??? Here it can be $300-500, and good luck getting in anytime close to Christmas.
If you do a simple quilt, or one with all straight lines, you can quilt it on a home machine IF and ONLY IF you have a very big table to hold the part of the quilt you aren’t sewing so it is not pulling on the part you are sewing. I just do straight lines along the blocks.
Of course, this is why I like doing baby quilts and blankets.
We do have a big table and I plan to just do straight lines, which is what D requested. I did straight lines 30+ years ago on a plain sewing machine and it worked OK.
Boo! The 45mm Ofla rotary cutter I got on Amazon is not cutting through the fabric, even only 2 layers! It was highly rated! I’m going to return it and maybe try a 60mm cutter. The blade is brand new so that shouldn’t be the issue.
Any suggestions on a cutter with a sharper blade than the Olfa carbon one that really was NOT sharp and struggled to cut through single layers and REALLY didn’t work well with 2 layers.
I have a Fiskars. Inexpensive brand probably not chosen by most serious quilters. Sometimes I need to ‘backtrack’ small spots but not often with a new blade. I’m usually only working with one layer though.
When using a rotary cutter, esp one with smaller blade, you really have to push down hard to get it to cut. If it’s not cutting, it’s either your technique or the blade is dull. Blades are easy to replace and will dull quickly when cutting through poly-blend fabrics. Plan to replace it often. Like maybe every 20 or so pieces cut. Or whenever you start have places where the cut doesn’t go all the way through the fabric.
It’'s really easy to nick the blade of a rotary cutter so it has a dull spot and doesn’t cut well. You can use a sandpaper-based sharpener, but it’s faster and easier to just replace the blade.
I have 3 sizes: 28MM for use when cutting curved pieces out of 1 layer of fabric; 45mm for quickly slicing up 2 or 3 layers of fabric along straight lines; 60mm for cutting heavier weight fabric (like chino or lightweight denim) in straight lines.
I have both Fiskar and Olfa. rotary cutters. Straight handle and ergonomic handle. I prefer the ergonomic handle because I get less hand fatigue and am less likely to cut my fingers since the blade cover slides down when you release the handle.