DIY Disney T-shirt Quilt | Phase 1: Gathering Materials

It's official. I have begun work on my very first t-shirt quilt! This is something I have been wanting to do for a very long time. And what better way for us to do it than with our Disney shirts that we've been saving? In fact, I was amazed by how many shirts this quilt was going to need! I used several resources on-line to get started on this project, but finally settled on Totally Stitchin's tutorial. At least this gave me a good place to start with measurements.

I decided to make a twin size quilt. We generally use our quilts more as a throw while we are on the sofa watching movies, and less as a bed cover. To that end, I wanted this quilt to be easily accessible and not too big. I also realized that my t-shirts would not go nearly as far as I thought they would! Another good reason to stick with a twin-sized quilt. According to my measurements, I was going to need a LOT of shirts!

Since math is in no way my strong suit, I wanted my measurements to be even, meaning no half shirt squares to deal with for the quilt. For my twin, I decided to use 11" x 11" squares that would sew up to 10" x 10" squares. A twin quilt is 60" x 90". This way it was easy to see I would need 6 squares across and 9 down, for a whopping total of 54 shirts! This is actually more that I had on hand - shocking, by the way. So I gathered up the family and went to Goodwill. Did you know that the first Saturday of every month they have a 50% off the entire store sale? Neither did I, until we stumbled upon it. Great for the pocket book, not so great for the kiddos waiting for Mama to sort through all the shirts and then wait in line. Next time I will leave the kids with Mr. Photos From The Parks!

And to make things just a little more complicated, I realized that all my shirts were different sizes! So I needed to find a way to make them all work together in a way that would be pleasing to me. I didn't want to put something together only to think every time I got it out, "that looks so odd." Been there, done that! To address this problem I settled on appliqué. The baby and toddler sized shirts would need to be appliquéd to larger squares that fit the pattern.

The solution was easy, since most of my adult-sized T-shirts didn't have printing on the backs. I would use the backs of those T-shirst for the 11"x11" base square, and appliqué onto them the baby size shirts. In theory, it totally works! I'll keep you posted on how well it goes in real time!

Now that I have all of my shirts gathered, my next step is to get them all cut and prepped! I'll keep you posted on this project - I'm super excited to get it done! Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!