New Tips And Triks For You

Welcome back T-Shirt quilt maker! You are ready to move on, yes? Do you have your twelve t-shirt squares all set? And you know in what order you are arranging them? Yay! I love you guys. Let's move on to DIY T-shirt quilt tutorial step two - sashing. (Want a quick refresher of step one? Sure, just click here.)

Here are my fabric possibilities for the sashing and corner stones. The rest I will use for borders, back and binding. You may have noticed that I do not have enough fabric. You are very astute young quilter! When I bought these fabrics I just liked them, later I decided to use them for this project. Don't worry, I will get more for the back and binding but in the meantime, I have made my decision. Green and blue for sashing, green for cornerstones. Done.

Cut 11 strips of your sashing fabric and 2 of the green. How wide? However wide you want, but between 2" and 4". Take a look at your blocks and see what you think looks best.

I decided to make my strips 3.5 inches wide which was a fateful decision; I needed 31 12.5" pieces of the plaid. You can get 30 from a yard. I only had a yard. Ouch. Don't fret, I was able to piece together one more 12.5" piece. This is why I have the supply list as I do, so you won't run short and have to pick morsels from the trash and create one more piece like I did.

I cut 15 12.5 pieces from the 11 sashing strips. I had them in a pile. I put them up on a green strip one at a time as I was sitting at my machine. I did that to sew them onto a green strip. I just kept sewing until all fifteen pieces were sewn onto a green strip. Leave the other plaid strips uncut.

Press the seams towards the plaid and cut them apart.

This happens pretty fast and you are creating the horizontal strips that separate each row. If you want, feel free to do the vertical strips first but then you are playing with longer strips. I prefer shorter strips. You need a total of 5 strips comprised of 3 sashing pieces and 4 green cornerstones. At first you will have 3 with a cornerstone on each end. One of those will need a additional green cornerstone added so there is one on each end.

Then I made up 5 piles of those pieces. I do like to try and be organized, thanks for noticing. Notice I am not showing you my entire sewing rooms so as to maintain this illusion.

Each pile gets sewn into a strip. After that I press them so all the cornerstones are pressed flat. You could do it the opposite way but whichever you way you choose, they all have to be that way.

And here are the cuties now, I line them up and check the seams. I will press the t-shirt blocks in the opposite direction so the seams butt up, not pile up. This creates a smoother top without bumps that are impossible to quilt. For now, just make sure the seams are all pressed the same way. They are? I knew you were a clever person.

Can you visualize how this is going to go together? Strips in-between each row? Hurray! Let's pause here then.

It's going to be spectacular when it's all done. Just like yours will be.

Recap:

Cut your sashing strips and corner stone strips. Cut 15 12.5" pieces and then leave the other strips be. Sew those onto the green, press and cut. Put them in piles of 3 adding an extra cornerstone to one. Sew the piles into strips. Iron.

Then hang on for the next T-shirt post, number 3 which will finish the top.

I am working ahead of you so I just got mine on Gladys, my beloved Gammill Longarm.

I probably won't finish for a week or so. Doing this series of posts is keeping me working on this quilt like the dedicated quilter that I am. (Full disclosure - I am prone to not being quite that speedy, don't be fooled.)

Keeping up with the sewing and posting of this quilt makes me pretty darn happy.

Sew happy!

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Want to see post with finished T-shirt quilts at the end of the photo gallery? Click here.