About a year ago I was sorting through the "out-grown" clothes in my large son's closet. He is now 13 and has achieved the astonishing size of 6'1" and about 200 pounds, and even then he was pretty darn big. So, obviously, he has had a tendency to outgrow his clothes.

One of the items that we always seem to have a stack of is too-small t-shirts. They are usually emblazoned with sarcastic sayings ("Sure, I'll go to my room, I have lots of toys and video games there"), or logos for places we've been, or activities (summer camp, tae kwon do) we've participated in, or museums we've visited. Some have been signed by fellow classmates at various school end-of-year picnics.

Well, to my eyes these are treasures. They are snapshots of my son as he has meandered along through life until now. I remember the day in the emergency room, where we waited for the doctor to come set his broken arm, and he was wearing the shirt that said, "I got out of bed for this?" I remember how awesome he thought the shirt with the blue and yellow "fighting dragon" on it was when he first started tae kwon do at age six.

So I decided that since my enormous child needed bedding for his new larger bed, that these t-shirts I couldn't bear to just throw away would make a great comforter. There were certainly enough of them to cover his bedroom floor from wall-to-wall-- why not use them to cover his bed?

I consulted him on the subject, and he said he thought it was a cool idea. I suggested that we could use the shirts for the upper side of the comforter, and a solid color fabric for the back side. He agreed, and chose a nice cozy-yet-manly navy blue flannel.

The resulting piece of bedding is unique to him, reminds us all of good times past, and keeps him nice and warm on wintery nights. I am pleased with how it turned out, and I am already saving t-shirts for the next one, which will have to be king-sized!

You will need:
A bunch of old t-shirts
A ruler or tape measure and something with a square corner (like a hardback book)
Lightweight cardboard (like a cereal box, or that piece you get with a new collared shirt)
Chalk (any chalk will work, but it helps if it has a fairly sharp point)
Scissors
About 5-6 yards of solid-color fabric
Quilt batting (for the inside: you can usually get this already cut to size at craft or sewing stores)
A sewing machine (or a needle and thread and a LOT of patience!)

In order to make this comforter, you must first decide on a size. The dimensions I found online are:

Twin bed: 65"X88"
Double bed: 80"X88"
Queen bed: 86"X93"
King bed: 104"X93"

Now decide what size you want your squares of t-shirt material to be. I made mine 12"X12", but if your t-shirts are smaller, you may want to make your squares smaller. I laid out my t-shirts on a table, and then put a ruler down next to the logo or design. For the most part the design fit comfortably in a 12"X12" square. It also depends on how many shirts you have, and also how much fabric you can actually use from each shirt. Some of my shirts had tears or stains, and I had to cut my squares very carefully. If you don’t have enough t-shirts, you can always add a few pieces of another fabric.

So, let’s say you are making a twin comforter. The easiest way to do it would probably be to use 11" squares, six across and eight length-wise, and just have it end up a tiny bit shorter than the standard size.
I allowed for a ½” seam on all my pieces, so for a twin comforter with 11" squares, you will actually be cutting 12"X12" pieces of fabric out of your t-shirts. I found it helpful to make myself a pattern out of lightweight cardboard. I used a hardback book and a ruler to cut it square and to size, laid it on top of the t-shirt, and then used chalk to trace the outline of the cardboard square around the part of the t-shirt I wanted to use. It was easy to cut along the chalk line and get a nice even square.
After you have cut all your pieces out, lay them out on the floor and shuffle them around until you find an arrangement you like. I sewed them together one row at a time, then sewed the rows together length-wise, and doubled all my rows of stitches, for added strength.
For the back, you’ll need a piece of plain fabric the same size as your assembled t-shirt pieces. If you get a 45” or 60” wide piece of fabric, cut it into 2 panels each 33.5” wide and 89” long, and then sew them together length-wise (using a ½” seam) to make one panel 66” wide and 89” long. This helps the back of the comforter look neat and tidy later.

Now lay your finished “back” (the plain fabric part) right-side up on the floor. Lay your finished “front” (the t-shirt part) right-side down on top of it. The sides of each piece that you want to end up on the outside of your comforter should be face-to-face. Lay your quilt batting on top of the whole thing in an even layer, and pin the three layers together.

Sew around the perimeter of your “sandwich” (using a ½” seam), making sure your batting is getting securely tacked to the fabric around the edges. This will help keep it from wandering around and bunching up when you wash the comforter. Leave an opening in the middle of the bottom end about 22”-24” wide. Here again, I double-stitched everything so it wouldn’t come apart.

Reach through the opening at the end into the inside of the “bag” you have made, grab the far end of the comforter, and pull it through like you are turning a sock right-side out. The corners will want to stay wadded up so you will probably have to stick your whole arm in and poke them out with your finger so that they are nice and square. Turn the last edges of fabric under and stitch the opening at the end of the “bag” closed.

Pick the whole thing up and “snap” it out like a towel so that the two fabric panels lay together nicely.  With your t-shirt panel side up, run a couple of seams each length-wise and width-wise, like a tic-tac-toe grid, so that the front and back panels will lay smooth and your batting won’t bunch up inside. If you follow along the seams between your t-shirt panels, the whole thing will end up looking nice and neat.

Yay! You’re done! Doesn’t it look great?