T-shirt Rag Quilt: BYU

A couple weeks ago I posted the machine-quilted t-shirt quilt I made for Shaner and V-man out of Shaner's old t-shirts. Well this week, I finished a new t-shirt quilt. I had this dream of making a machine-quilted "Y" (for BYU) out of all of my old blue and white/gray t-shirts. However, when I pulled them out of the old tupperware that the Madre had sent down to me, I realized that about 2/3 of the 56 necessary t-shirts were already prepped for a rag quilt! I decided it'd be much more convenient and time-efficient to just prep the other t-shirts and make a "Y" rag quilt.

And that's just what I did.

The "prep" stage that I keep speaking of is the cutting and filling of each shirt. Cut each one to 12 1/2 inches. I used an 8x7-shirt design to make a queen-sized quilt. After I drew it out on the computer, I knew just how many dark vs. light shirts were needed. 

After cutting the shirts to size, it is time to cut the flannel to the same size. Each square of flannel is then placed between the front and the back of each t-shirt square and they are sewn together with a large X (corner to corner seam on each square).

After each shirt is "prepped", it is time to lay them out in the design and order you want. I tried to keep shirts that were too similar further away from each other.

Gather up the shirts row by row and leave in separate piles. I had eight different piles at this point. Then sew together the seven t-shirts in each row, being sure to make the actual seam show on the FRONT of each shirt. I used a 5/8-inch seam. On each end (top and bottom of entire quilt and sides of each row), sew a 5/8-inch seem as well, even though no shirts are being connected there. After each row is complete, sew the tops of each new row to the bottom of the previous row until the entire quilt is sewn together and has ugly seam lines all over.

The back of the quilt should appear like this, with clean seams. 

Next comes the tedious but essential part of this project: trimming the seams. JoAnn sells short-nosed clippers meant specifically for this project. They cost a pretty penny, so I used a 40% off coupon for it and it was much more affordable. Trim each seam about 1/4-3/8-inches apart using the clippers. In addition, trim the outer edges (where I previously mentioned you needed to add a seam) in the same manner.

And the rag look is finally showing through.

After trimming the seams, there will be A LOT of thread and lint pieces from the trimmed edges. To remove that and to finish the rag look, simply wash the quilt on a light wash and then dry it. Because of the large amounts of lint, however, I dried it in four or five different 10-20 minute cycles, cleaning the lint out between each cycle. It worked like a charm!

Here is what the finished seams look like up close.

  

And here are the edges where you added the extra 5/8-inch seam.

And there you have it! Now V-man has a nice "Y"on his huge bed, and this quilt actually fits!