Just say no to t-shirt quilts

Sun, 20 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

…and make something else

A quick writeup for a very quick project. I’m not telling you how to live or what to do, but just me personally, I really hate t-shirt quilts. I have look at lots of them, and I know people really love them to give and recieve, I know people have made good business making them, and I know people get very attached to their own. I get it! But I have genuinely yet to see one that I liked.

So.

I posted this on Instagram but I want to mirror it here so it doesn’t get lost by The Algorithm. Here it is:

There comes a time when two nerds meet, fall in love, and move in together that one (me) says to the other (my husband), hey, your entire wardrobe consists of con shirts or geeky sayings on black and I think it might be time to retire them and level up sartorially. We don’t have to throw out your favorite shirts, I’ll save them and make them into a tshirt quilt.

Fifteen years later, I still hadn’t made that quilt because honestly? I’ve yet to see a tshirt quilt that I didn’t think looked horrendously ugly. Plus the vinyl paint for printing on tshirts is a sensory nightmare as it ages and who wants that next to their face when they sleep? Not me.

So in a bin those shirts had slept for a decade and a half. They stayed in that bin as we moved from Boston, got married, then moved to Waltham, had our kid, and then moved to Chelmsford. But at this point if I didn’t do something with them… it was time to go to textile recycling.

So I made something with them.

Last week I had the idea to turn them into drink coasters for our offices and gaming nights. Are these going to win any beauty awards? No. Are they superbly made? Also no. But they’re now actually doing something instead of sitting in a plastic bin in my closet, and best of all, my husband had cooooompleeeeetely forgotten about his old shirts all these years, so it was a delightful surprise for him to see these old shirts again in their new form. I probably made a dozen in all, here are just a few.

I’m sure this is not an original idea of mine and don’t claim that it is. Just throwing the idea out there for anyone else who has old tshirts they don’t want to toss. Sewing knits sucks (or at least I hate it) but this is a very, very easy sewing project.

Coaster on Maria Makes A Mess

Just say no to t-shirt quilts

…and make something else