How to choose a T-Shirt Quilt Maker

With graduation just around the corner, lots of people are looking for someone to make a T-shirt quilt. There are so many choices of styles, and a big range of prices. So, I thought I’d do a little run down for you.

There are three points I’m going to talk about: style, construction, and cost. I won’t have pictures for everything I’m going to talk about because I’m only going to use pictures of quilts I made myself.

Style

There are two basic styles I’m going to talk a little bit about: simple squares and collage/puzzle/mosaic. When you pick a style, you should choose a maker who makes the style you like. There are advantages and disadvantages to both, but I should warn you that I am not an unbiased reporter. I am a quilter/blogger, and I’m very biased to the style I make – the collage/puzzle/mosaic style.

1) Simple Squares

Here’s me standing on a chair to get a full shot of this t-shirt quilt top. My best quilt holder was working that day, so I decided to get the shot myself.

This one is the closest one I’ve ever made to a simple squares t-shirt quilt. It’s not the most basic version since I did add in a few more complicated blocks in the top left and bottom right corners. I also added some sashing in gray and a lighter blue and a border. All the shirts I used were navy, and I thought that would be a boring quilt, so I added that sashing and border to make it less bland.

This one is actually the first t-shirt quilt I ever made. I had been making quilts for a while at that point. Once people started finding out I was a quilter, a lot of people were asking me about t-shirt quilts. So, I decided to dig out some of my old shirts and make one. For that first quilt, I wasn’t going for the most elaborate quilt. I really just wanted to get used to working with t-shirts before cutting up anyone else’s shirts. If you want to see some pictures of this quilt finished, you can check it out here.

-Advantages

-You can make a bigger quilt with fewer shirts compared with how many shirts you need for the collage/puzzle/mosaic style.

When I dug through my old shirts, I realized I’d left most of them at my parents house an hour and a half away. I was not patient enough to wait about my practice work with t-shirts, so I went ahead and worked with what I had – four shirts. They all had graphics on both front and back, and a few of them had patches. This gave me a grand total of 10 graphics. When you scroll down to the pictures of my other quilts, you’ll see that there are a LOT more that 10 graphics in there. This style is perfect for people who don’t have as many shirts but still want a bigger quilt.

-Having all of the blocks the same size does have a clean look with an orderly appearance.

You can check out my instagram post on this quilt for a run down of the times when this is a great style to use.

-It’s much quicker to make. So, it should be less expensive than a collage/puzzle/mosaic style of comparable quality and size.

-Disadvantages

I should warn you that my bias is about to show a little bit here. In my opinion, the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages in the simple squares style. My example above is not even a good example of the simplest form of this one because of the complex blocks I added as well as the sashing, corner squares, and border I added.

-Cutting all of the graphics to the same size only works if all of the graphics are a similar size. The shirts I used in the navy quilt had mostly the same size graphics, other than the ones on the complicated block in the top left and bottom right corner. In my experience with all of the t-shirt quilts I’ve made, I’d say the most common size block is a 12 inch square, but what about the blocks that are much bigger or much smaller?

The picture above shows some graphics that would not have fit into a 12 inch square block. I would’ve had to cut off some of the graphics. The idea of cutting off graphics makes me cringe. From a quilt maker’s point of view, asking my clients which words or pictures they want me to cut off is NOT a conversation I want to have. I could certainly tell my clients up front that anything that won’t fit into that piece size will be cut off and ask them to choose their shirts for the quilt accordingly, but that severely limits what items they can put in their quilt. If I was looking for someone to make me a t-shirt quilt, I would not choose someone who couldn’t include all of my favorite shirts without cutting off the graphics.

You may be thinking, why not just make your pieces bigger than 12 inch squares to be able to include those bigger pieces even with a consistent block size. Well, for one thing, not all shirts are big enough to cut a 16 inch square from them, so that’s a problem, but what about the small pocket size graphics that you often see in the top corner on the front of t-shirts. Check out what I did with some of those graphics in the picture below.

If I’d cut those small graphics in a 12 inch square piece, you’d have a tiny graphic stuck in the top corner of a big block. Since I’m only using quilts I made for these pictures, I don’t have any pictures of this to show you. I don’t do this in my quilts, because I don’t think it looks good (there’s that bias again).

2) Collage/Puzzle/Mosaic – my favorite style

-Advantages

-All of the blocks are cut to the appropriate size for the graphics. This means no cutting off graphics and no leaving a tiny graphic stranded in the upper corner of a block that’s way too big for it.

-This gives a really interesting appearance.

-Disadvantages

-Some people prefer a more orderly appearance.

-It uses a lot more shirts than a simple squares quilt of comparable size. So, if you don’t have as many shirts, your collage/puzzle/mosaic style quilt will use a lot more nongraphic/filler pieces. A quilt made with more filler pieces can still look great, but some people don’t like a lot of nongraphic pieces. The quilt below was made with only nine items of clothing and is a good example of how a quilt with a lot of nongraphic pieces can still look pretty.

-This style quilt takes a LOT longer to make, so you should expect to pay more for it than you would pay for a simple squares style t-shirt quilt.

Construction

-Quilts vs. Blankets

When I talk about quilt construction, one of the main things I want to talk about is the difference between a quilt and a blanket. I’m not saying that a blanket can’t be well made, but you should know that it’s not the same thing as a quilt, and you should not expect to get a quilt for as cheap as a blanket. A quilt has “quilting”; a blanket does not. If you don’t know what quilting is, it’s the stitching design that goes all over the quilt, and it goes through all layers of the quilt. You can see this in the picture.

If there isn’t any quilting, it’s not a quilt, it’s a blanket. You could take hold of the front and back at any point on the blanket and separate the two layers.

-Batting or No Batting

Some quilters believe that it’s not a quilt unless it has three layers: quilt top, batting, and backing. Batting is the layer in the middle of the top and the backing. It’s what gives the quilt that little bit of extra fluff and warmth. It comes in a range of quality and fiber composition. Even with similar fiber compositions, the quality really varies from brand to brand. Batting quality is a big enough topic to have it’s own post. So, I’m going to just throw my opinion out here on this one. The best batting for quilting is either 100% cotton, cotton with a layer of scrim, or a cotton blend. I avoid wool batting because wool gives some people the itchies, and how sad would it be to buy a beautiful quilt that you end up not even being able to use.

I live in the southeast USA where it gets really hot, and t-shirts are already warmer and heavier than regular quilting cotton. If you back it with flannel, it makes it even warmer. So, I’d say that it’s ok to skip the batting if you think it would be too heavy or hot with that extra layer, but you should be sure you know if you are getting the batting or not. Batting is standard in my quilts.

-The amount of quilting

Even with quilts (meaning there is quilting) there can be a big difference from maker to maker. Some makers use more quilting than others. The amount of quilting is really important if your quilt is going to have batting in it. Some makers only quilt around the edges of the blocks. The specs on the batting should tell how far apart the maker can go without quilting. If you don’t have enough quilting, your batting is likely to wad up or break apart when you wash your quilt. The farthest specs I’ve ever seen call for quilting that is no farther than 10 inches apart, but most are more like 6 inches or 4 inches. If your maker is using all 12 inch blocks and only quilting around the edges of the blocks, this is not enough quilting, even with the batting that allows you to go up to 10 inches without quilting. This is something you need to think about when you’re choosing a maker.

Another thing to think about is that quilting adds a lot to the look of your quilt. A quilt with a lot of quilting is just going to look a lot fancier. There are also a lot of different types of quilting. Some quilters use only straight lines, some use free motion quilting. The picture of the back of my quilt shows an example of free motion quilting. There are a lot of possibilities with free motion quilting. Some makers will use the same design all over the quilt, and some will change it up from block to block and even trace graphics in places.

Cost

This one is NOT an apples to apples comparison. Cost is a function of materials and labor. Higher quality materials make for higher costs, and a quilt that takes longer to make increases the cost as well. As a potential buyer, you should not expect a quilt maker to adjust her prices to fit your budget. Quilt makers have families to support and bills to pay as well. Quilts take MANY hours to make, and fabric is NOT cheap. You should expect that your quilt maker will need to cover the cost of the fabrics as well as make an hourly wage for the labor. About this labor… It’s very skilled labor. Not everyone is able to do this, and you should expect that your quilt maker is not going to make your quilt for only a little bit more than what they have invested in the materials. The next time you see a quilt (any type of quilt) that you think is priced too high, ask them how many hours it took them to make it.

A simple squares quilt should be less expensive than a collage/puzzle/mosaic style quilt. Cutting all the pieces to one size using a set amount of blocks per quilt size takes much less planning than a collage/puzzle/mosaic style. I have to measure all of my graphics and get a count of each piece size and then try to puzzle it and see how I can fit it into a quilt size. Sometimes, I have to rearrange the layout several times to get it all to fit. So, I’ve spent at least a few hours on this quilt BEFORE I make a single cut on any shirt. A quilt with lots of quilting should be more expensive because of all the extra time compared to one with minimal quilting. A t-shirt blanket should be even less expensive than any of the others mentioned because of the lack of quilting.

So what should you choose?

This is going to be different from person to person. You have to decide what’s driving your decision. Are you most concerned with style and construction or with cost? Is the style you like best in your budget? There’s nothing wrong with staying within your means. If you can afford it, but you are wanting to save on costs, can you live with the trade off that you will inevitably have to make between price and construction/style? These are all things you have decide for yourself.

If you want to know more about my t-shirt quilts, you can check out my deposit listing here. It has lots of information about my quilts.

As always, thank you for taking the time to read my blog!

I hope you enjoyed it.

If you have any questions, please feel free to leave me a comment or email me. I’d love to hear from you.

Happy quilting!