How to Prepare Shirts for Use In a Quilt
Use Them for Memory Quilts and More!
Whether you want to make a memory quilt or simply repurpose shirts into a cozy quilt, the first step is preparing the fabric. While it’s simple to cut a shirt apart, you first need to consider fabric content and make sure the shirts are clean.
You may also need more colors to pull the quilt together. You’ll find inexpensive shirts at thrift stores. Old bed sheets can also be used or pull quilting fabric from your stash.
Shirts are most often used for memory quilts. However, they’re also an excellent source of interesting fabric that’s inexpensive or free so it pays to learn how to use them.
C&T Publishing has created an excellent free download that covers everything you need to know to work with shirts. Learn about prewashing, cutting, starching, and stabilizing them.
You’ll need to “Add to Cart” and go through a checkout process, but you will not be charged for the tutorial.
A second tutorial by Erika Mulvenna from We All Sew explains how to prepare both pants and shirts for use in a quilt. She also includes a few examples of quilts made from shirts.
When planning your quilt you’ll want to decide before preparing the shirts whether or not to save the pockets or front plackets. These can be design elements that add interest to the finished project.
You’ll find several quilts and other projects made from shirts in the Quilting Digest archives. The search for “shirts” produced these results while “shirt” brought up a few additional projects found by scrolling through here.
