Hello World,
After graduating college, I realized how many t-shirts I had. Most of them were just sitting in a bin for three months not being worn. So, I used them all to make a t-shirt quilt.
I was a crazy person and decided to make the quilt in a day, instead of doing it gradually over time. I spent 2.5 hours cutting up the shirts and 2 hours ironing on interfacing. I have a love-hate relationship with fusible interfacing. It takes a lot of patience, but is very necessary to sew stretch and non-stretch fabrics together. The rest of my time was spent problem solving and sewing. I finished this quilt in 11 hours straight.
When I was making the layout I used a randomized layout. I did this instead of following a grid, since my shirt designs were all different sizes. This made the project a little more difficult, since I had to somehow make all the shirts fit.
The back of the quilt is blue/grey leopard fleece that I bought for 60% off at Jo-Ann's. If you make a quilt and use fleece, I suggest you buy an industrial needle for your machine. I forgot to and snapped a needle midway through.
I killed 42 t-shirts/totes/sweatshirts to make this baby, and now have a queen-sized quilt to use for winter. I hide the quilt under my damask comforter because it throws off the look of my room, but it's nice to cuddle up in a little nostalgia.
(In case anyone was wondering, I used 3 yards of fleece and 8 yards of fusible-interfacing to make my quilt. I would suggest you buy more interfacing than you need. Then you don't have to be as stingy when ironing your shirts to it like I had to.)
Happy Crafting!