T-shirt Quilt Planning: What If Your T-shirts Are Already Cut?

We hear the following question all the time: “My T-shirts have already been cut. Can you still use them?” Yes.

Why Your T-shirt Might Have Already Been Cut

• At some point you, or someone you know, started making a T-shirt quilt. You know that it will never get done unless someone else finishes it.
  
  
• You wanted to store your T-shirts for a quilt. So you cut out and kept the graphics from your T-shirts.
  
  
• You were going to use another company to make your quilt, or blanket. And then decided after you cut your T-shirts that you wanted someone or anyone else to make your quilt.
  
  
• You had a quilt or a blanket made by another company and want them remade into a Too Cool T-shirt Quilt.

So, can Too Cool T-shirt Quilts make you a T-shirt quilt with your already-cut T-shirts? YES. Yes, we can.

The quilt here was made from T-shirts that were all already-cut. You can tell, yes. But it doesn't look bad at all!

Planning a T-shirt quilt?
Here are step-by-step directions for ordering your Too Cool T-shirt quilt.

Will Already-Cut T-shirts Cost More to Use in a Quilt?

You are not the first, nor the last person to have the issues of pre cut T-shirt. It's not a very big problem.

We make many T-shirt quilts from T-shirts which have been cut in many different ways.

Note, some precut blocks do require additional work. We must make the blocks already cut blocks to fit our block sizes. We call these block repairs. Here are some close ups of blocks that we have repaired for this quilt.

These repairs are not considered in the pricing of a quilt. We do have five block repairs built into the cost of our quilts. For each additional block repair there will be a charge. Read more here. 

So, if you have already-cut your T-shirts, you are welcome to include them in your quilt.

Steps to Take When You Are Ready to Have a T-shirt Quilt Made

When you to have your T-shirt quilt made, you need to do the following:

1. Wash Your Whole T-shirts

If you are including additional whole T-shirts to your pile of already-cut blocks, please wash the whole T-shirts. Especially if they have been sitting for a while.

Why? First, we like to work with clean T-shirts. Also, you will not want to wash your quilt right after your it's finished. Stinky in, stinky out!

2. Don't Wash Your Already-Cut Blocks

Unless they are very dirty or stinky. Small blocks and pieces of T-shirt material will curl, roll, and wad up after they are washed. They become difficult to work with. We have ways to work with such pieces, but it is more work. 

Also, if you do wash your already-cut blocks, make sure you get them all from the dryer. Sometimes they will stick to other clothing items or just get lost. You know, like socks!

3. Include Any Extra T-shirt Material from Your Already-Cut Blocks

If you still have any of the material from the blocks you cut, please send that with your blocks.

We have 100's of colors of T-shirt material at our disposal. After all, we cut +/-30,000 T-shirts a year. That's a lot.

But, there are 1000's of T-shirt colors. We might not have the exact color to put behind your block. With your extra fabric, we can match the fabric. If not, we will do our best to find a fabric that works. 

4. Tell Us What Not to Use on Your Whole T-shirts

Every quilt maker has specific directions for telling them what you want used from your T-shirts. Here at Too Cool T-shirt Quilts we have directions on how to tell us what not to use. Here are those directions. 

If you are planning on using a different quilt maker, you need to follow their directions.  Here's an article about what to do after you have chosen a quilt maker. 

5. Order You T-shirt Quilt

Here are our directions for ordering your T-shirt quilt. 

Here's a short video showing the T-shirt quilt we wrote about in this article.