Today, I am going to show you how I prepare a T-shirt to put into a quilt.

First, get your iron and press the shirt to get out any wrinkles. I use parchment paper underneath so that any of the adhesive from the interfacing doesn’t get onto my quilting board. If I was going to do it face up, I would also have a layer of parchment paper on the top so that no sticky residue would go onto my iron either.

The interfacing has a shiny and a matte side. The shiny side is where the adhesive is and this will go face down onto the T-shirt.

I like to start in the middle and let the iron press and hold for a bit to let the glue activate. Move the iron from the center and out. Set your iron to a cotton setting. I prefer to use steam but the choice is yours.

Hint: Use distilled to avoid lime build-up in your iron if you have hard water where you live.

I let the adhesive adhere and then check the ends to make sure it’s on there well. Since it is an expensive product, I used the end pieces to make a full piece to avoid waste.

Now the shirt is nice and stiff. When I lift it up it’s more like a piece of paper and not stretchy. The added structure makes it easier to work with.

And that is how you prepare a t-shirt. In my next tutorial I will show you how to add sashing pieces to the quilt top.

I also created a video of this tutorial: