DIY Disney T-shirt Quilt | Phase 3: Using Smaller T-shirts

As I mentioned in my first post about this t-shirt quilt, I have t-shirts of varying sizes. Some are as small as 6 months onesies, others are 3T. I have some sentimental attachment to many of these and I wanted to include them in the quilt - a way of keeping them and making them useful again. But I was clearly not going to get an 11"x11" square out of them. So I decided to appliqué them onto larger squares.

This is the process I used:

As I was cutting the adult sized t-shirts, I laid them flat and cut through both the fronts and the backs of the shirts. This way, I had the printed square from the front, and a blank square from the back.

I then took the blank square, ironed on the fusible interfacing (Pellon) to stabilize it. (I did not use the Pellon on the smaller square as it felt it wasn't necessary.)

Then, I cut out the printed design from the child sized t-shirt using an 8"x8" square. Again, I made a pattern from scrapbooking paper to make it easy to cut.

Once the smaller square was cut, I centered it on the larger square and used Stitchery Witchery to bond the smaller one to the larger one. If you've never used Stitchery Witchery, it's very simple. It will bond two fabrics together by just ironing it on, the perfect thing to hold the small square on the larger one in order to appliqué it.

After the smaller square was securely adhered to the larger one, I simply used the zigzag stitch on my machine, and stitched around all four sides of the small square. And since I had plenty of scrap material from the left-over t-shirt parts, I was able to test the zigzag settings to get them just the way I wanted them prior to sewing on the first square.

I almost have all my squares completed! The next installment should be the sewing of the quilt top! Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!