A Crafter's Life

T-shirt Quilts

tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Have you made a T-shirt quilt? They are a great way to recycle old T-shirts.

Our Collection

I realized yesterday that we have three (3) T-shirt Quilts in our home:

  • A king-size T-shirt quilt made from 49 of Terry the Quilting Husband’s old t-shirts and a couple of mine. It is super warm (it has flannel shirt flannel fabric on back) so we use it in the winter:
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Terry Birthday T-Shirt Quilt, pieced by Tierney Hogan, quilted by Guadalupe Designs
  • A lap-size T-shirt quilt made from our collection of Schnauzer-themed t-shirts (and yes many of the t-shirts below were worn by Terry – he is a man who unabashedly loves dogs!). We have it as a wall-hanging in our bedroom:
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Schnauzer T-shirt Quilt, pieced by Terry Hogan, quilted by Guadalupe Designs

Several of the schnauzer T-shirts are from when we used to attend the annual “Schnauzer Walk” in Portland Oregon, which we fondly call “Schnauzer Fest” as a huge group of miniature, standard and giant schnauzers take over one of the parks in the Portland area for a day!

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  • A T-shirt quilt made from our collection of microbrewery themed T-shirts (primarily Terry’s except for the “Central Oregon Beer Angels” one). Terry keeps this one in his sewing studio/guest room area:
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Microbrew Aficionado T-shirt, pieced by Terry Hogan, quilted by Guadalupe Designs

Resources

The two books I own that I use as resources on T-shirt quilts are Memory Quilts: Using T-Shirts, Autographs, and photos by Meredith Corporation (2007); and T-Shirt Quilts Made Easy  by Martha Deleonardis (2012)

Photo credit: Amazon.com
Photo credit: Amazon.com

Postscript

We have a stash of more T-shirts to make eventually into another quilt. I love the idea of T-shirt quilts and the recycling of old T-shirts.

When my father passed, I made my brother and sister each a T-shirt quilt of his old T-shirts (our father loved his collection of humorous T-shirts, I got my quirky sense of humor from my Dad). Now my brother and sister have a piece/memory of my Dad to wrap around them!

Terry the Quilting Husband, also has a very quirky sense of humor. One of his favorite t-shirts, which I incorporated into the king-size bed quilt, is from when we lived in Texas from the late 1980s to late 1990s. The humor in Terry wearing this t-shirt is that we are originally from NY and except for NE England, you can’t get more “Yankee” than that!

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Published by tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Quilter, crafter, obsessive tea drinker and lover of all furry creatures (especially dogs and cats) - join me on my tierneycreates blog as I share stories from "A Crafter's Life".

14 thoughts on “T-shirt Quilts”

  2. I’ve been asked by a few people if I would make them a t-shirt quilt. My answer has always been “no.” It’s just not something I want to take on. But yours are fun and I know many people cherish them for the memories.

    Today I got my flying geese wrangled. Two of the borders are on and fit perfectly. The other two are waiting to be attached to the center. But for now my studio is unplugged and the project will wait. Other adventures, and all that!

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