Matty's Tee Shirt Quilt

by Debra Matlock
(Los Angeles, CA)

For some reason my husband and I bought novelty tees whenever we set foot out of the house. Between the two of us we had 5 gigantic boxes of tees we never wore. Eventually, I just cut out the good parts and whittled it down to one box. Then I was kind of stymied. I wanted to make a quilt, but I hadn't cut them out in perfect squares.

Once I realized t-shirt fabric doesn't ravel, it all came to me. Appliqué the t-shirt part on fabric that you DID cut properly. So I sorted out the kid friendly shirts and came up with this for my son. It coincided with him getting a big boy bed and much to my surprise he really, really loves his quilt. Yea!

So this was the first thing I ever made with my sewing machine that I got a year ago. If I did it all again I would probably get nicer fabric for the front, since I paid a fortune for the fabric on the back! It was machine quilted and appliquéd. I sewed around the design first and then carefully cut off the excess t-shirt material. I had never made a quilt before and found a tutorial from Purl Soho explaining the "sandwich" and voilà!