Sewing Tutorials | FabGrandma

The last thing I needed to do before shipping the quilt to Utah to be quilted was to make the back. Now, I have always looked at the back of a quilt as a whole second project. You can make it as simple or as complicated as you want. It can be one solid color or you can piece the back and make it just as beautiful as the front. The only rule with making the back is that it needs to be 4″ larger on each side than the front. That means since I the front of this quilt measured 96″ X 96″, the back needs to be 104″ X 104″. This gives you enough room to secure the back in place when you make your quilt sandwich with the batting, the front, and the back. I send my quilts out to someone with a long arm quilting machine to be quilted, so I won’t be showing you that part of the process. This is just my preference, because I like the professional was the finished quilts look when they are quilted that way.

Judy had requested that I use the T-shirts that I wasn’t able to use on the front somehow on the back. She wanted to be able to see those shirts when she turned the bed down at night. Here is how it turned out:

The back of the quilt can be a whole new canvas.

Keep in mind that what you are looking at is the wrong side of the fabric except for the part at the top that is turned down as it would be when the bed is being readied for the night. This will make a lot more sense when we get the completed quilt back from the quilter.

Another view of the back.

It really is going to look better when the quilting is completed. I’ll be mailing the quilt to Jorja in Utah in the morning. She does her artwork with a longarm quilting machine, and will have it ready for me to pick up after April 26. The next time you see this quilt, it will be ready for me to send to Judy, where ever she may be at that time.

One last pic of the back before I ship it off to Utah

Filed Under: Quilting, Sewing Tutorials Tagged With: Quilting, tutorial

Making a T-Shirt Quilt Tutorial, Part 5

March 23, 2011 By Fab Grandma 4 Comments

Tonight it was time to add the borders to the quilt. I needed to figure out how wide to make them, so I had to measure the quilt first. To measure for the borders, you need to fold the quilt top in half, then measure from one side to the other at the center of the quilt where it is folded. When you measure at the center, your borders will be the same length as the center and will make a more “squared up” completed project. My normal measuring tape is not long enough to make this measurement on a large project, so I bought a Quilting Tape Measure that is 120″ long. I don’t think I will ever make anything that is too large to use this tape with.

Use a Quilter's Tape Measure for large projects

The pieced top measured 65″ square at this point, but Judy wants her finished quilt to be 96″ X 96″. To find out how wide to make the border pieces, I added 1 inch to desired finished measurement, because when you sew on each border, you will use a 1/4 inch seam. (1/4 X 4=1). Subtract the existing measurement from the desired measurement: 97″ – 65″ =32″. Because you will have a piece of the border fabric on each side of the quilt, divide the total border measurement by 2: 32″/2=16″. So, I needed to make two border pieces that measured 65″ X 16″.

Measure the desired lenght and mark it on the fabric

I measured and cut three 16″ wide X width of fabric pieces, then sewed them together end to end. Then I measured 66″ (just to make sure they were long enough. Sometimes I just don’t trust myself.) I used the sharpie marker to make a mark on the fabric, then used the rotary cutter to make the cut.

Use your ruler and rotary cutter to make the cuts

Pin pin pin, to keep the seams straight. I can not stress enough how important it is to use pins. It makes your sewing projects come out so straight and nice.

Pin pin pin. Seams come out straighter when you use those pins!

I sewed the borders on each side of the quilt first, right and left. After they were attached, I measured again before cutting the borders for the top and bottom. Although I was pretty sure the measurement would be 96″, it never hurts to make that last measurement to make sure before you cut. Sure enough, it was 96″. And look, I have to brag just a bit, because they came out just right! There is a lot to be said for accurate measuring in quilting!

Look! a perfect fit!

And then, after all that work, it looks great! Now all I need to do is make the back, then send it out to be quilted.

Ta Da! It looks great! It won't be long now until it is completed.

Filed Under: Quilting, Sewing Tutorials Tagged With: how to make a t-shirt quilt, project

Making a T-Shirt Quilt Tutorial, Part 4

March 22, 2011 By Fab Grandma 5 Comments

To see the first three parts of this tutorial, here are the links:

Measure the length of the rows.

You need to measure the length of the rows you have made. The rows I made for Judy’s quilt measured 65″ long. So, because I need 4 sashing strips each 65″ long, I need 260″ of sashing to sew the rows together. Here is the quilting math:

(4) 2.5″ strips X 65″ length needed=260″ needed /44″ width of fabric= 5.90 strips (rounded up to 6). I cut the strips,sewed them together end to end to make one long strip. After they were sewn together, I measured 65″ lengths and cut 4 pieces out.

Pin pin pin--pinning helps keep things in place until you have stitched them together.

After the strips were cut, I pinned one to the top of row#5, the bottom one, then stitched it in place. Then, I pinned the other side of the strip to the bottom of row #4, and stitched again. I repeated the process until I had all the rows and sashing strips sewn together. I pressed all the seams towards the sashing strips.

Press the seams towards the sashing strips.

Tomorrow, I’ll figure out how big the borders need to be to make the finished quilt come out to be 96″ X 96″. Here is how it is looking after sewing all the sashing strips and squares together.

Looking good--it's getting close to being done!

Filed Under: General, Quilting, Sewing Tutorials Tagged With: how to make a t-shirt quilt

Making a T-Shirt Quilt Tutorial, Part 3

March 15, 2011 By Fab Grandma 7 Comments

So far, we have cut all the t-shirts and trimmed them up to all be the same size, ironed the stabilizer to the back of all the pieces, and then sewn all the appliques on. Today, we finally are going to start putting the quilt pieces together!

Today, the first thing I did was to cut six strips of the sashing fabric into 2 1/2″ X width of fabric pieces. The actual number you use and the length they will be are determined by how many squares you have, and what size they are. I am using 25 squares that are each 12″ X 12″, so I need to make 20 12″ X 2 1/2″ strips. A little math lets me know how many to cut. My fabric is 44″ wide. So, if I need 20 X 12 inches of fabric, I need 240 inches. Divide that by 44″, and it comes out to 5.45.

Quilt Math: 20 pieces needed X 12″ length needed=240 total inches of fabric needed /44″ width of fabric =5.45 total number of strips to cut.

I used a ruler and my rotary cutter to do this:

Cut the sashing fabric into 2.5 inch strips

Trim off the selvage on both ends of each strip.

trim off the selvages

Sew the strips together with a 1/4 inch seam to make one long strip. Press seams open.

Stitch the strips together end to end

Cut twenty 12″ pieces from the sashing strip:

Cut twenty 12" strips of sashing.

Sew a piece of the sashing fabric to the right hand side of each of 20 t-shirt squares, using a 1/4 inch seam. This will leave 5 squares with not sashing strip attached. Remember: Pins are your friends. Pin, pin, pin.

Pin a sashing strip to the right hand side of each strip and stitch them together.

After all the sashing strips are sewn onto the squares, press all the seams towards the sashing strip.

Stitch using a 1/4 inch seam.

Now you are ready to lay out your squares to arrange them in a pleasing design. You can use the floor, a design wall if you have one, or your bed, if it is big enough. At this point, you can still move the pieces around until you are satisfied with the look of the quilt. Once you have the pieces arranged and you are happy with it, you can label your rows. I started at the bottom of the quilt and numbered the first row #1, and went up to the top row #5. This will help you to put the pieces back in order if you have to put it away before you are finished sewing. (You can also number each piece if you want, using row 1, 1, row 1,2, row 1,3 etc.)

Here is what my layout looks like for Judy’s quilt:

The layout for Judy's quilt

Next time, we’ll sew the pieces together to make rows, and sew the rows together.

Filed Under: Quilting, Sewing Tutorials Tagged With: how to make a t-shirt quilt, Quilting, tutorial

Making a T-Shirt Quilt Tutorial, Part 2

March 14, 2011 By Fab Grandma 2 Comments

In part one, we got all the T-shirts fronts (and some backs) cut (mostly) into 14″ squares, then ironed on the stablizer to the back of them all. The next thing I did was to sort them into two piles. The first pile had one piece in it: the smallest one from the previous step. It is a fact that not all t-shirts are equal. Some are larger than others, so when I was cutting them the first time, my goal was to have ALL of them a little bit larger than what I wanted them to be in the final step. With Judy’s t-shirts, the smallest one from the first cut would only yield a 12″ X 12″ square in the second cut. The second pile had all the rest of the pieces in it.

Once I found the smallest piece, I folded it in half twice like I did for the making the first cuts. Then, using my square ruler, I measured 6″ on both edges, and marked with the sharpie marker where to cut. I cut on the marked lines, and unfolded a 12″ square of t-shirt fabric. This was my first 12″ square. I used it as a pattern to cut out the rest of the pieces:

Cut the smallest piece first to use as a guide for the rest

In the photo above you see that I have pinned the blue piece to the white piece to use as a guide for cutting the white piece. Doing this will insure that all of your pieces are the same size. When you make yours, you don’t have to make 12″ squares if your smallest piece is not large enough to do so. Just make sure all the pieces you cut are the same size in the end.

Next, I sorted the pieces again. This time, I put all of the pieces that had a smaller piece pinned to it. Judy had some shirts that had logos or images on the sleeve, or a small logo on the front and a larger image on the back. She wanted to incorporate those smaller images into the finished quilt somehow. I chose to do machine applique to achieve this.

To do the machine applique, I set my sewing machine on the automatic button hole stitch. This makes the machine do a very close together zigzag stitch, that is called a satin stitch sometimes.

Use a buttonhole or satin stitch to do machine applique

On my sewing machine, the setting is indicated by the red dot. You’ll have to look at the instruction book on your machine to figure out which setting to use.

To get started on the appliques, you need to make sure that the smaller pieces all have the stabilizer ironed onto the back of them, too. This prevents the t-shirt fabric from puckering up while you stitch the applique onto the larger piece. Cut the smaller piece into the shape you want.

Cut the applique pieces into the shape you want.

Then, pin them into place on the larger piece.

Pin the applique in place before you start stitching.

Stitch all the way around the applique near the edge, turning the whole piece as you go.

Stitch all the way around the applique

And this is what the finished applique looks like:

The finished applique

another of Judy's t-shirts

and one more

And one more with another applique

And finished my work session for the day. It was a lot accomplished in the afternoon. Next, we are ready to stitch the sashing to the squares.

Filed Under: Projects, Quilting, Sewing Tutorials Tagged With: how to make a t-shirt quilt, Quilting, tutorial

Making a T-Shirt Quilt Tutorial, Part 1

March 8, 2011 By Fab Grandma 9 Comments

Here are links to the rest of the tutorial: (I’ll be adding more as I go until I get this quilt finished.)