Have too many t-shirts from various philanthropies, mixers, formals, bid days, etc? Do you like to hoard things because throwing them away feels like throwing away memories? Are you sometimes cold at night? If you answered yes to at least one of these, then you need to make a t-shirt quilt! T-shirt quilts allow you to be artsy, functional, and allow you to keep all of your memories that are symbolized by various t-shirts. So dig out your inner craftiness within your soul, and follow these easy steps to make a trendy t-shirt quilt!

Step 1: Learn to sew. This is a pretty essential step because this is what you will be doing over the entire quilt. Ask your grandma to teach you, or maybe even do it for you.

Step 2: Pick out around 30 t-shirts. Make sure that you are never planning on wearing these shirts again. T-shirts that are too small or just too silly to actually wear in public (I have quite a few of these) are ideal.

Step 3: Buy your quilting supplies. This consists of about three yards of fleece, nine yards of extra-wide single fold bias tape, 10 yards of apparel interface material, thread, good fabric scissors, tons of pins, an iron, and an ironing board. You probably won't use all of these materials, but it's really nice to have extra in case you mess up.

Step 4: Lay out your shirts in an orderly fashion. With 30 shirts, I would recommend a 5 x 6 pattern. Make sure you lay them out right where you want them on the quilt, which means pay detail to color coordination and whatnot.

Step 5: Cut out t-shirts to correct square size. I would get a piece of cardboard to trace and use as a guide. Make sure they are squares! (Unless you are an expert at quilting and want to make a crazy pattern instead.)

Step 6: Iron the interface on the back of each t-shirt. Make sure that the bumpy side of the interface is the one touching the t-shirt. After you are doing ironing it, trim off the excess interface so that it matches your t-shirt.

Step 7: Lay your shirts how you want them to appear on your quilt, but facing down this time. You are going to pin the squares together by picking up the edges together and pinning them. Here is a picture to see what I mean:

Step 8: Sew all of the squares together. I would recommend using a sewing machine because it will take a very long time if done by hand. Sew along the pins and don't forget to take them out.

Step 9: Iron all the seams open so that they are flat.

Step 10: Lay your fleece down with your t-shirt squares on top. Pin it how you would like it to appear and sew across the vertical lines of the t-shirts. Next, do the same thing with the horizontals.

Step 11: Sew around the perimeter of the quilt.

Step 12: Cover the edges of your quilt with bias tape. This allows you to have nice edges that aren't ragged by the edges of the fleece and t-shirts.

Step 13: Cuddle with a book under your new quilt that you just made!