Does a Border Make Your T-shirt Quilt Bigger or Smaller?
Adding a border doesn’t always make your quilt bigger.
If you start with a set number of T-shirts, a border will increase the overall quilt size.
But if you’re working within a fixed quilt size, the border takes up space, which means your T-shirt panels have to shrink to fit.
How Your Starting Point Affects T-shirt Quilt Size
The answer is yes and no.
It depends on where you start. Are you working with a set quilt size, or a set number of T-shirts? That one decision changes the answer.
Below, we’ll look at both scenarios and how adding a border affects the size of your T-shirt quilt.
Adding a Border to a Set Number of T-shirts
If you are beginning with a set number of T-shirts, you first have to figure out how large of a quilt those T-shirts will make. After we cut your T-shirts, we provide this information to you.
Your border will then be added to the size quilt your T-shirts can make.
For example, let’s say those T-shirts will make a quilt without a border that is 60 x 72. (This is our multi-use size quilt.)
Here’s what happens if you add a border of different sizes:
- A 2” solid border will increase the quilt size to 64 x 76. This is because we added 2” to all four sides of the quilt. The inside of the quilt with your T-shirts is still 60 x 72. But the border will make the quilt larger.
- The larger border you add, the larger the quilt will be. A 2” solid + 4” pieced + 2” solid border will increase the quilt size to 76 x 88. This is between a twin and a full size. With this border, we added 8” to all four sides of the quilt. The inside portion of the quilt remains the same.
Including a Border on a Set Quilt Size
If you are planning a quilt and you know what size quilt you want and what style border you want, you can then determine how many T-shirts you will need.
Adding a border to a set size quilt means that the inside of your quilt will be smaller.You will need fewer T-shirts to get to the size quilt you want with a border.
If you want a quilt with a final size of 60 x 72 including a border, this will mean that the inside of your quilt has to be smaller. Here are two examples.
- A 2” solid border will decrease the inside of the quilt to 56 x 68. We subtracted 2” from all four sides of the quilt.
- A 2” solid + 4” pieced + 2” solid border will decrease the inside size to 44 x 56. This is because we subtracted 8” from all 4 sides of the quilt.
Planning a T-shirt quilt?
Here are step-by-step directions for ordering your Too Cool T-shirt quilt.
Where Adding a Border Can Cause Confusion
The issues we run into is when a customer wants a border, but they send in way too many T-shirts for a quilt the size they want with the T-shirts they want.
They then have to choose between T-shirts and a border or end up with a larger and more expensive quilt than they wanted.
We always think that the T-shirts are way more important than the border. We suggest forgoing a border over T-shirts.
Conclusion
We hope this article helps you understand how a border effects the size of a T-shirt quilt.
Remember, a border will change the size of your quilt if you begin with a set number of T-shirts.
When you start with a set size quilt, adding a border will not increase the size of the quilt, rather it will shrink the T-shirt portion of your quilt.
Want to learn more about T-shirt quilts? Visit our Learning Center.
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