Making a T-shirt quilt sounds so easy. You simply cut your T-shirts and sew them together. What's so difficult about that? You just need a pair of scissors and a sewing machine. Well there's a little more to it! If you want to make your own quilt, read on!
It takes more tools than a pair of scissor and a sewing machine! Here are some of the tools that we use to create our T-shirt quilts.
The scissors that quilt makers use are different than scissors you find around the house. Sewing scissors are very sharp and cut easily through fabric. Most sewers will reserve their sewing scissors just for fabric. Anyone caught using my sewing scissors for cutting paper gets in trouble, because cutting paper quickly dulls scissors.
We use rotary cutters at many different points in our quilt making:
We also use smaller cutting mats. These mats are placed onto the larger mats to protect these large mats from excessive wear. We also use the smaller cutting mats when we cut out T-shirts. The small mat can slip into the T-shirt and protect the side of the T-shirt we are not cutting.
Plexiglas templates are used to cut T-shirts to a specific size. They are clear so we can see through the template to the T-shirt. This lets us line up the T-shirt perfectly. We have over 20 different size templates that we use.
We cut around the templates with our rotary cutters.
Rulers, like our templates, are made from clear Plexiglas. Other than being clear, they look like other rulers with incremental markings. We use rulers to cut our quilts out after they have been quilted and to cut the fabric we use to bind our quilts.
We use sewing machines with dual walking feet. Basically this makes it so you have feed dogs on the top and the bottom of your fabric. This lets both pieces of fabric feed into the needle evenly.
A long-arm sewing machine is a tool that most people don’t have. A new one costs about the same as a new car. Most hobbyists don’t have a long-arm quilting machine. But hobbyists can rent time on a long-arm or hire someone to do this for them.
Having the right tools can make any job so much easier and more enjoyable. We love our tools and take care of them. We will replace worn or broken tools right away so we can keep ourselves safe and continue to make beautiful T-shirt quilts.
Back to: Making Your Own T-shirt Quilt