Oh, I know, it’s not like you are going to get yards and yards of fabric from a shirt that you find in a thrift shop – or even one you find in your closet.
You may get yards and yards from a big, full skirt or a long dress. But not from a shirt.
However, I was surprised to see how much usable fabric you can get from one shirt.
I took a men’s size Medium shirt, 100% cotton and in pretty good shape and cut it apart. The goal was to get as much fabric as I could from the shirt.
While it is true that a few of the pieces are only 2-1/2 inches wide, if you need 2 inch square patches, it is perfect.
The back, fronts and sleeves have some fairly substantial pieces in them that can easily be cut into larger squares, triangles or other shapes for your quilt.
The whole process took less than 15 minutes, and that includes my pondering to figure out what I was going to do next, and taking pictures so I could share them with you.
One option I considered was to leave the pocket on the front of the shirt. I thought that might be fun if I needed a large square of fabric.
For this demonstration, I took it off, but in other shirts, I may leave it on and see what comes as I make the quilt.
As we look at our fat quarter quilt project, I am excited about the possibility of getting some really low-cost fabric from thrift shops in order to get some fun fabric for a quilt.
You’ll see the step-by-step process here:
http://how-to-quilt.com/articles/1020-cut-a-shirt-for-fabric.php
Happy Quilting!
Penny
July 10, 2009 at 21:52
Two comments on the cutting up of shirts:
1) A friend of mine did this with shirts from her husband who had died, and made quilts (with a puzzle-type pattern) from them for each of her children/step-children. Quite the meaningful gift. The squares only needed to be 11 inches (I think) so easy enough to get what was needed from each shirt.
2) My husband is actually a 2XL sometimes 3XL guy, so LOTS of fabric on his shirts! He tends to wear his shirts til the neck area is no longer in good shape, so the shirts cannot be donated (which would be our first choice). Most of the rest of it is still in good shape, however. Thus, I have a pile of shirts saved up from him that I may someday use. Even better, he tends to like similar sets of colors, so the fabrics often go well with each other.
Anyway, thanks for the writeup on the best way to cut up a shirt.
Carolyn
July 11, 2009 at 11:21
Thanks for your input! It’s nice to hear that someone has made quilts using shirts.