Lessons

Lesson Info

Cutting into Clothes to Make Quilts

So let's cut into some clothes so I pre cut these, but I also had a couple other pieces that I wanted to include in this design so I have this shirt I chose the shirt at the thrift store the reason I chose it it's a woven fabric but look at the back you can use the front or the back when you're looking at a thrift store clothing look at both sides because the woven shirts can really have some interesting backs, so I thought this would be fun because it's kind of like getting two fabrics and won and then this this is another example of this is a heavier fabric the's air pants but I thought the color was fun and I love it. You know, something that might be a fun color to wear one year might be a fun color to pin a quilt the next year that was the same with this. This was a j crew um sure a really cute sure it is a great color, but you know that that might be last year's color and this year's quilt. So anyway, so we're going to cut these up and really quickly to show you how I do it so th...

ese have been laundered altogether these were laundered with all of these with my color catcher and all of that and so the first thing I'm going to d'oh I don't necessarily in this shirt want these seems I don't know you may just because it's not going to create flat fabric. So what air this seems I might want to keep. I might want to keep this leap locket, I think it's kind of cool. I wouldn't want the cuff. Um, I definitely would want this plaque it because I think that would be interesting. I don't need the collar sometimes the back yoke is it is a double layer of fabric, so you could actually cut that out and open it up and possibly get some scores out of that. But what I'm going to do first is with my fabric scissors. I'm going to cut the collar off cause I don't need that. I'm just going to cut it close to the same and just all right, so the collars done and then I'm gonna cut the sleeves off again. Just stay close to the side scene, go all the way around if you guys have any questions at all while I'm doing this, please feel free to ask. So now I've got this lovely sleeve and honestly, you can get a surprising amount of fabric from the sleeves, so always cut the sleeves open tio yes, rizzoli, you had a question. Oh, I was just wondering if you've ever tried to incorporate any of the items that you're excluding now like have you ever tried to make a quote that included the collar or the the cops I'm actually working I haven't tried to you before but I'm actually working on a baby quote right now that I was actually going to try and put like the whole garment in there I have to let you know e will let you know how that works so it cut the cut off of the sleeve of cut the sleeve off of the shirt and then I would just again cut this once lee or this one scene off it's bulky when you have a bulky seems sometimes the needle can do funny things when you're sewing so unless you if you really really want it and there you can try to make it work and I'll show you the best way to do that but I wouldn't really use these so there you have that's that's a lot of fabric and the cool thing is again you can use the back to which makes really so that I would just set this aside and just keep cutting I'm going to cut off the friend and then you're gonna want to cut the yoke off of the back because usually men's and when that they have little pleats pecked there's you didn't want to open this up so blair quick question you seem to be here you're doing it fairly quickly so you're not too concerned about like being accurate or not at this point it all yeah not at this point you're just wanting to get cut the seams away okay but you want to stay close to the scene so that you don't you know slice into fabric that you could cut into squares right? So you're not thinking about how many squares will fit in this particular piece of that well yeah, I mean I've made enough of these to know that depending on the size of the shirt you can get thirty to fifty of these squares incredible I know it really is I mean, most of these shirts and I've done more men shirts than women's but you're looking like a yard and a half at least a fabric and every shorts different but this shirt you know is really inexpensive at the thrift store and fabric new fabric is expensive so that's where you get this hole idea that you know if I cut into this and I ruin it doesn't work out in my project it's five dollars or however much it wass versus twelve thirteen fourteen dollars for a new a new yard of fabric I had a question like a lot of these shorts probably have wear on the sleeve and things like that so do you keep that in mind when you're cutting it d'oh on shirts I might not use the warning areas I also like to patch them teo and that's a whole other subject that you could patch little squares on them denham pieces sometimes with warren areas or the interesting area so it just depends on the type of garment corduroy if if the napper worn down I may not want that in my quilt uh but if it's a lighter denham area like me that might be kind of interesting so it just depends but if it were this a type of fabric and it had a war in area I probably would not use it I mean the thing is is that you're going to be quoting over this that's going to add some stability to it but you just have to decide you know if this quote going to be used and loved and washed how much could that will area take so yes he squares are those five and a half in five and a half inch square cia sounds like a lot like I am sat one day and kind of a whole bunch of shirts and just average them out and I was surprised because a five and a half inch squares kind of big right so yeah you actually can and that's you know with the right cutting with angling everything the right way which I'll show you so I'm just continuing to cut these seems away and I would probably I'd cut the theme yoke off the back yoke and then I would press this the other thing I didn't mention said this particular garment is an extra large look in the large section because you can find a lot of usable fabric I mean and a lot of like this particular when this was in short form this was a small shirt so I probably didn't get his many out of this particular garment but that's just something you take into consideration if you're looking at the thrift store four shirts um look att large wants the larger the better so yeah, I'm not thinking too much about cutting here I'm just slicing off the big scenes that's why it's so nice to have sharps really nice with all the scraps that you have left out of this shirt well there you know, some people say no scrap is too small to keep for a quarter sometimes when I cut on my end up with a piece like that, I would say that I have been under my work table but I just throw my scraps and and then I actually pay my kids to sort them by color into plastic bins you know they'll do anything for money and then you know, if I want a piece something um or play around with scraps which I like to do a lot I've got him separated by color, which is great but yet they get much smaller than that. I probably just I don't know, you know, I keep pretty small scraps so let's do these pants really quickly so I can show you how I do these. I'm just gonna again, we think we have scissors that air this shark because you're just going, you don't need the way span, you're going to slice into it, and then usually what I do is cut around the fly and not so much on these, but on denim, look at the scenes like the inseam and the out scene. I loved those particular scenes when their top stitched into my quilts the's air, not top stitch, so I probably wouldn't use thes the's are the top stitch seems are really cool, so you would if the incident and the out seymour both tops, that she would just pick one to cut and leave the other one open, and I'll show you how to do that will pretend that these have top stitched seems if I were going to keep get the out same and these might also have interesting back pockets that you might want to keep. So as long as you stay close to the scene when you're cutting, you're gonna have lots of so here I'm not cut. The out seem ive on ly cut the insane. So now you've got twice as much fabric, and if you wanted to incorporate an interesting scene, you could. And if you were going to do the insane versus the outside, me would just do the exact opposite of what I just did that this has been this has an interesting pocket I might do. I might try to incorporate that I would cut off the him. The other thing I found on curtains that a lot of times I'll find, like, really cool curtains at the thrift store, and they have really deep hymns. This is another response to, like the warn areas, because if I cut the hands off of the curtains, sometimes you can actually get some interesting color variations where the curtains were hung and the son sort of bleach them out. And then, uh, you can open them up and you might have, you know, this could be an interesting area. And then sometimes on curtains, it's double folded, so you'd get, like, a glimpse of what the fabric look like, completely brand new inside of the fold, which is kind of cool. So this one's pretty much ready to go, and then I would do the same to this, I would discard the waistband, the fly, um the other thing I will say in jean sometimes they have interesting pocket bags like they have thinks printed on them cut those out we can use those could just cut him out cut open one side and spreadem open and you could if you could get one score out of it then that's that's worth saving so does that pretty much explained the cutting portion does anybody have any questions? Yeah, your fabric scissor sharp no, I hide them. Um there's a couple different things I found a sharpener at like a big box craft store that I can just do you just run them in and out that will sharpen them I've also tried cutting into aa folded a piece of tin foil that will sometime if you just spend a lot of time doing that it will sharpen your scissors but if you ever have like a access to someone he doesn't knife sharpening or anything like that it is just so worth having these ready to go so anybody else rotary cutters as well or do you just get a new blade? They have a sharpener that I've seen again and big box craft stores for the forty five millimeter and it's kind of this weird contraption that has like an emory side and then a smoothing sides that you have tio put it on there and twist it but you it will work but you have to do it a lot like, you know, you had to do it like five minutes and then flip it over and it for five minutes. So I do try to do that. Sometimes I'm too lazy to go out and get more blades, because these air kind of pricey the blades for these air kind of pricey. But I have not seen one for the sixty millimeter, so I don't do that a lot. I wish somebody could make a sharpener for these. That would work for all sizes. It would be worth it.