New Technique for Stabilizing T-Shirts: Part 2

I make a lot of T-Shirt quilts. I love seeing how the client’s memories come together into a beautiful keepsake quilt. My least favorite part of the process is stabilizing the t-shirts. I don’t mind the feel of the lightweight interfacing. In my opinion, lightweight, flexible interfacing exists. Stabilizing the shirts works, not because you’re making them stiffer, but because you’re sticking the stretchy and uncooperative shirts to something not so stretchy and uncooperative.

So, why am I bothering to find another method? Fusing the interfacing to the shirts just takes too long. The heat press helps A LOT, but I still want to spend less time on this step so I can move on to designing and constructing the quilt.

This is my second little experiment. In the first experiment, I spray basted some t-shirt scraps to p44f before I cut the pieces. Just FYI, I don’t experiment with my clients’ quilts. You can read about the first experiment here. For this experiment, I used some cotton jersey knits that I bought from Joann and spray basted them to some super cheap muslin before I cut the pieces.

Why I chose the material I used

I used cotton jersey knits because they are uncooperative, stretchy little beasts similar to t-shirts. You can check out my instagram reel where I was showing how stretchy they are. I chose super cheap 100% cotton muslin because I don’t want this method to be accused of only working because I spent a fortune on materials. All of the other materials are comparable to what I would normally use in my t-shirt quilts; same type backing, batting, and thread.

Just like last time, I tried to sabotage the experiment a little bit. I wanted to see how this technique holds up to not exactly perfect practice. I paid no attention to making sure the grain of the muslin was all going in the same direction in the quilt. I also paid no mind to the grain of the muslin in relation to the direction of the stretch in the knits. I also did not prewash the muslin. I am a fan of crinkles, so I don’t usually prewash fabrics. Between the inconsistent grain direction and the unwashed cheap muslin, the shrinkage is about as pronounced and ugly as it’s going to get. Another thing I did to sabotage this is the quilting. I didn’t sabotage the actual quilting, but I did quilt it densely enough that I couldn’t fudge it. So, just like in my t-shirt quilts, I couldn’t move the fullness around and rely on the crinkles to hide the weird-ness like I could if I used a lot less quilting.

There were three things I wanted to test with this technique: piecing, quilting, and washing/drying.

Piecing

Cutting the pieces for this one was a completely different feel than using interfacing. The muslin provides no extra structure and curls up on the edges with the t-shirt material instead of keeping it all flat. Really all it did was reduce the stretch. This actually didn’t cause any issues with piecing the quilt. It felt similar to working with flannel. Flannel has a reputation for being a little stretchy and uncooperative, but I’ve personally never had any trouble with it. I did use my walking foot to piece it just like I do with the t-shirt quilts.

Quilting

I quilt all my quilts myself on my domestic machine. So, I did have to baste this one. I basted it as I normally would before quilting it. Quilting is actually the step I was most worried about. This technique is useless to me if it can’t hold up to and be cooperative for free motion quilting. I didn’t have any trouble with quilting this one. It is fair to point out that I do have a lot of experience working with t-shirts already. I’m not sure how much this experience helped me versus how much of it was the muslin stabilizing the knits. I do have a reel on instagram showing that I wasn’t doing anything special when I quilted it.

Washing/Drying

I did measure the finished quilt before I washed it so that I would have a baseline to know how much shrinkage there was. It was 39.5″ x 39.5″ before being washed. I did worry that there would be an excessive amount of shrinkage, lots of distortion of the quilt’s shape from the shrinkage, or both. I’ve only used muslin a few times, and I’d never had any experience with super cheap muslin like I used in this experiment. I actually ordered it from Walmart for less than $2.00/yard…

It turns out neither of those things happened. The quilt measured 37″ x 37″ after being washed and dried. I did wash and dry it pretty much the same way I would my t-shirt quilts: machine wash cold, tumble dry. It was dry when I checked on it after 30 minutes, but I left it in for 60 minutes to give it extra time to test the shrinkage. I did not wash it on gentle like I typically do with the t-shirt quilts because I wanted to push this technique a little harder than I would normally go. I kept the cold water to keep those pretty colors from fading. Anyway, if my math is correct, that’s about 6% shrinkage, maybe a little more than if I’d used the same quality cotton that I used for the backing, but not enough for me to rule out this technique.

Pros

There are a few advantages and disadvantages I anticipated with this technique. In the picture above you can see a wrinkle in the pink knit after I spray basted it to the muslin. I could have easily smoothed this out, but I left it in there on purpose to prove my point with this particular advantage. Since it was so small, I was able to easily avoid it with the quilting. Unlike the glue used to fuse the interfacing, the spray baste should wash out easily, eliminating that wrinkle in the finished quilt. I wouldn’t suggest leaving a huge fold or tuck, but for the small ones they should wash right out if you don’t quilt over them. I actually put a safety pin beside that wrinkle after I quilted this one. This allowed me to mark that spot so that I can show you how it looks after the quilt is washed. Did that wrinkle wash away? You can see in the picture below that it did. This would not be so easy if you had a wrinkle after fusing the fabric to interfacing.

Another HUGE advantage to this technique is TIME. In fact, time is the reason I started these little experiments in the first place. When you fuse interfacing, you can’t just iron over it quickly. You have to press and hold for several seconds over each spot you want to interface. How long depends on the interfacing, but I’ve have worked with some that take even longer than the instructions say. This seems to take forever with an iron. You have to press pretty hard too; my arm was always tired after interfacing the shirts for big quilts before I got a heat press. The heat press does speed up the process A LOT, and it will do the pressing for you once you get it closed. BUT, it still keeps me away from my sewing machine longer than I’d like. Spray basting is SEW much quicker than fusing the interfacing. It also saves you the time you would have to spend with ironing the shirts prior to stabilizing them because you can smooth the wrinkles out as you are basting.

Cons

The spray basting is a lot more temporary than fusing the interfacing. This was an advantage with my little basting wrinkle, but it could work against you in some situations. Properly fused interfacing doesn’t accidentally come undone while you’re handling the pieces. Notice I said “properly fused”… it can be tricky to get the fusing correct. Temperature, how long you press down, and how hard you’re pressing all take some getting used to. This is much easier to do with a heat press than an iron, but you do have to tweak your settings a little before you find what’s right for your heat press. There’s also the issue of different shirts have different fiber compositions, and different fibers need different heat settings, but this is about the disadvantages of the spray baste technique, not the fusible interfacing.

So, back on topic… you pretty much have to do it on purpose to pull properly fused interfacing off of your shirts. Basting spray isn’t so hard to pull off. I did feel like I was having to be overly careful during piecing and cutting to keep the muslin and the knits stuck together. It turned out to not be an issue. But I was only making a baby quilt, and I didn’t use any partial seams in this one like I would with a t-shirt quilt. This little baby quilt didn’t get nearly as much man handling as a large t-shirt quilt full of partial seams. I feel like this needs to be tested with some of my shirts in a bigger quilt before declaring it worthy of a client’s quilt.

Another big disadvantage of this method is cost. Yes, the muslin I used was CHEAP, but spray baste is NOT. I use June Tailor Quilt Basting Spray so it’s actually a little less expensive that the super popular spray most quilters use. I used to use the stuff in the yellow can like everyone else, but I’ve found I like the June Tailor more. In my experience the June Tailor spray holds a little better for all of the non-cotton fabrics that find their way into my t-shirt quilts. Basting the t-shirts to the muslin basically amounts to basting your quilt top to your batting twice. YIKES, that goes through the cans SEW much faster! I think I may be getting a little more carried away with the spray than usual because THIS. HAS. TO. STICK.

So, you have to decide if you are more worried about the cost or the time. If you’re only making a few t-shirt quilts here and there for family members it probably wouldn’t matter either way. If you’re selling t-shirt quilts, you have to weigh the two against each other. After all, time is a very valuable resource too. If this is saving you enough time that you can book more quilts, it might be well worth the cost. This is something you have to consider for your own personal needs.

What will I try next?

My next experiment will probably involve using Elmer’s glue sticks. I have tried using Elmer’s washable jumbo glue sticks for basting these on smaller scale experiments. I baste quilts with washable glue sticks fairly often, so I know it works for that. It did hold well for the smaller scale experiments, and if you use the purple glue it’s easier to tell where you’ve already basted and cut down on the overuse. I did find that I used a lot less of the glue sticks than I did with the spray baste, enough that glue sticks would be significantly less expensive. It isn’t as quick as spray basting but still a lot faster than interfacing. So, this one is definitely worth a real experiment when I have the time.

Want to make a similar quilt yourself?

I did not have to time to write a whole pattern for this one, but I can give you the dimensions of the pieces if you want to make this little baby quilt yourself. All of the pieces were cut to 8.5″ x 4.5″. Each block was just one yellow piece and one pink piece. When placing the blocks within the quilt top, I just made sure to alternate between having a block with the pink piece on top and a block with the pink piece on the left to keep the steps affect. My quilt has 25 blocks (5 columns and 5 rows), but you could make it as big as you want it.