Blanket Making Ideas

T-shirts

• Cut a sturdy template to use as a guide for tracing the shirts. This size can vary but 11 inches will work well for this project. For shirts that belong to a small child you will need to make a smaller template. Turn the shirt inside out and center the template over the design. Trace around the template and cut that portion from the T-shirt. This represents one square of the blanket. You may also want to cut squares that are a solid color. Mix these solid squares in with the squares that have a pattern.

  The finished size of the blanket will vary according to how many shirts you have or the purpose of the blanket. Start by arranging the squares on a large flat surface. Cut more squares as you need them. Keep arranging until the look is to your liking. Start sewing the squares together using a ½-inch seam allowance. The amount of squares used for each row is a personal preference. For example, you may decide to have one row that consists of seven squares. For a square blanket you will need a total of seven rows each with seven squares. Complete this portion of the blanket by sewing the seven rows together to make your square blanket.

  Select fabric for the back side of the blanket depending on the desired weight and warmth. A flannel will be a lighter weight than a fleece. Place the T-shirt side and the backing with the right sides facing each other. Pin three sides of the blanket together and machine stitch with a ½-inch seam. Turn the blanket so right sides are now facing out and hand stitch the fourth side. To keep the front and back from shifting you can add stability by machine stitching between each square.

Flannel Shirts

• Using the same techniques as the T-shirt blanket replace the T-shirts for flannel shirts. The back of a man's shirt has a much larger area to cut so the template can be made larger for this blanket. You can use fewer shirts and therefore sewing together the squares will be somewhat quicker. The end result will be the same and it will be very colorful and warm.