Easy Graduation T-shirt Rag Quilt

Last year for my son's High School graduation, I made him this T-shirt rag quilt.

I didn't save all of his T-shirts for 18 years planning on making a quilt out of them; I saved them because he was extremely sentimental and wouldn't let me throw anything away. I didn't even get the idea to make a quilt out of them until about one month before his graduation when I was cleaning out the basement and came across a very large tote of his shirts. Now I'm so glad he was sentimental and made me save these (don't tell him this, I still hate clutter).

I bought a cutting mat, rotary cutter, large square ruler, small square ruler, and rag quilt snip scissors from Jo-Anns (Of course I used a coupon for everything). 

The large square ruler worked for most of the t-shirts, but some had small designs that I used the smaller square on and sewed 4 together to make one big square. If there wasn't a design on the back of the t-shirt, I cut through the whole shirt and used the back. If there was a design on the back, I used some of my son's tie-dye shirts we made over the years as the back.

After cutting all of the t-shirts, I cut a bunch of different colored flannel to insert into the middle, then sewed an x onto each sandwich block consisting of the top t-shirt design, middle flannel piece, and back.

After sewing all of the blocks, I laid them out and played with them to find a good mix of colors. I also turned them over to make sure the back of the quilt looked good.

Once I had them laid out the way I wanted, I began sewing rows together leaving a big enough seam to snip.

Once it was all sewn, I used these Fiskars snip scissors to clip all the edges.

This was a very inexpensive quilt to make since the only fabric I needed to buy was the flannel for the middle of the squares. It only took me a couple of days to make and was super easy. My son was thrilled when I gave him the quilt for graduation and uses it as a bedspread. I'm afraid that making this quilt taught him that it pays off to keep stuff and be sentimental, but it turned out so great that I can't help but be happy about his sentimental ways. Keeping a box of original Pokemon cards and Lego Bionicles will also probably pay off for him.

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