Making a quilt from dress shirts, think men’s button up shirts, can be tricky because you will often find yourself using many different patterns and fabric types. But, with a few little tips and tricks the stress level of this type of project decreases exponentially.

First, think of starch as your friend. Starch, especially a heavy starch, will stiffen up your fabric to help prevent stretching and pulling when you cut your pieces and when you sew them together.

You can find a great recipe for homemade starch HERE. Or, just go buy some!

Next, familiarize yourself with different woven interfacing options. This can be overwhelming, but when you are using many different weights of fabric, or especially thin fabrics, woven interfacing is your friend. It is so easy to use and will help your project immensely!

Here is one of my favorite woven interfacing. Shapeflex from Pellon is wonderful. I usually keep a whole bolt on hand for bag making. It will stabilize your fabric without adding too much stiffness that can often take away the soft fabric feel.

Last, break down your shirt into usable pieces before you try to cut your squares. This step will make cutting your quilt pieces so much easier!

In this video, I show how I like to break down dress shirts for quilt making.

Here is a fabulous pattern that I love to use when making quilts out of dress shirts.

The pattern is free, so be sure to go download it, and it is perfect for making a quilt out of repurposed dress shirts because the sashing helps tie all of the fun dress shirt patterns together!

For the quilts I made using this pattern I chose to not include the border. You could also easily add more blocks to make a larger quilt.

Happy quilt making!

Bye for now.