How Many T-shirts?

It’s hard to say! It all depends on your specific T-shirts. The list here is only an approximation of the number of T-shirts, sweatshirts or other clothing items it may take to make a quilt of that size.

You may need more T-shirts if the designs on your T-shirts are small. Or you may need fewer if the designs on your T-shirts are big. Count each T-shirt you have as one, whether it has a design just on the front or a design on the front and back. The more T-shirts you have with fronts and backs means you will need to be on the lower end on the approximate number needed. If you have T-shirts with small designs on just one side, you will need more T-shirts.

Generally, we take the T-shirts you send us and cut them. Then we determine what size quilt those T-shirts could make. We will e-mail you and tell you the dimensions of the quilt that these T-shirts can make. At this time you can accept the dimensions of the quilt or you can add or remove T-shirts so the quilt is the size you would like.


  • The size of your quilt is based on the size blocks we begin with. The actual size of your quilt can vary depending on your T-shirts. Some quilts end up larger, some smaller and other the exact size. T-shirts are stretchy. The amount stretch or lack of stretch will effect the final size of your quilt.  
  • We can make your quilt whatever size your T-shirts will allow. So, you might have a quilt that is in between standard sizes. Whatever size your quilt is, the size will be divisible by four.
  • Concert T-shirts tend to have large designs on the front and backs of them. They almost go two to one of typical T-shirts. Keep this in mind when you are counting out your T-shirts.

Too Many T-shirts?

When you have a lot of T-shirts and only want a small quilt, you will need to make some choices.

1. Make the quilt larger

2. Remove some pieces

If you know ahead of time that you might have too many T-shirts for the size quilt you are looking for, you can do a few things.

1. Pack your T-shirts into sets. The first set would be the T-shirts that must go into the quilt. The second grouping would be T-shirts that we can cut from if we need to make your quilt larger.

2. Keep a list of the T-shirts you send so if necessary, you can tell us what to remove.

Too Few T-shirts?

Do you need to make your T-shirts go further? You have a few options.

1. We can cut your T-shirts “big”. This means that there is more space around the design than we would normally cut. If you think that we need to cut your T-shirts big, let us know before we begin cutting.

2. We can also make your quilt larger by adding squares of bright colored T-shirt material. In the two quilts below, we were short on T-shirts to make the quilt the right size. So we extended each T-shirt quilt with colored squares of T-shirt material.

3. A border can be added around the quilt to make the quilt larger. Here is a link to our border page for more information.

4. A border and extra block combination is also possible.

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