Why Are There Blank Blocks in My T-shirt Quilt?

Have you noticed T-shirt quilts with blank blocks? Have you wondered why some T-shirt quilts have blank blocks? In this article I will explain:

• What a blank block is.
• Why some quilts have blank blocks.
• What blank blocks are made from.
• How we use blank blocks.
• How we decide where to put blank blocks.
• How we decide what color to make the blank blocks.

What Is a Blank Block?

Let’s break down a quilt top. We cut out each design on a T-shirt. This then becomes a block in your T-shirt quilt. The quilt top is comprised of these blocks. Blocks in a quilt top without a graphic or design are blank blocks or filler blocks.

Why Do Some Quilts Have Blank Blocks?

When we design a T-shirt quilt, it is first a mathematical process.  For example, a quilt that is 60” wide by 72” long has 4,320 square inches of area that has to be filled.  If your T-shirts only make 4,256 square inches of blocks, you will be short 64 square inches. You have to fill in those blank spots with something. That something are blank blocks.

What Are Blank Blocks Made From?

Blank blocks are generally made from scraps of your T-shirts that we save. As we cut your T-shirts, we save the bottoms of T-shirts that are colorful. We especially save the colors that are unique. For example, if you have one neon yellow T-shirt, we definitely will save that color.

We can also use the fabric from the border of your quilt for the blank blocks. We do this if you want a border color that is not a color in your quilt. 

For example, say that you love green. You want a green border added to your quilt. Why? Well, because you just love green! There is just one problem. None of your T-shirts are green. If we only added a green border to your quilt, it would look odd. Just not right. 

The solution is to add a number of green blank blocks to the body of your quilt. Now the inside of your quilt has green. The result? The green border will look awesome.

We also can make blank blocks from other non-T-shirt fabric you might send. For example, in a graduation T-shirt quilt for a young woman graduating from a Catholic HS, we can add blank blocks cut from her uniform skirts.

The second photo here shows an example of using pieces from the skirt for filler blocks. We also used the skirt for the binding. It was a great way to tie together the entire quilt.

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How We Use Blank Blocks

There are three typical reasons for blank blocks.

1. First and foremost, blank blocks are used to fill in empty spots in your quilt. Remember, these empty spots are because your T-shirt blocks didn’t fill in the area completely. If there are not any empty spots, there won’t be any fillers. FYI – 98% of the quilts we make have 1 or more fillers. 

   
   
2. We can use blank blocks as a design element. For example, you can add a color to your quilt that is not in the colors of your T-shirts.
   
   
3. We can use blank blocks to purposely increase the size of a quilt. Say you want a queen size quilt but only have enough blocks for a full-size quilt. We can add blank blocks to fill to increase the quilt size to a queen size. 

How We Decide Where To Put Blank Blocks

We add blank blocks to the map of you quilt, last. Once all the T-shirt blocks accounted for, we then fill in the empty areas with blank blocks. We want to make sure we spread them out evenly throughout the quilt.  If all the blank blocks end up in one area, we will redesign the quilt until we have them evenly spread out.

Some of the blocks we use are just a small square. Sometimes we will make the blank block a rectangle. This shaped block can help us eliminate 4 corners coming together in a quilt. We try very hard never to have 4 block corners come together. We like our quilts to look as random as possible. 

How We Decide What Color to Make Blank Blocks

This is one area where the artistry of our quilts comes into play.  We like to balance the colors of the blocks throughout the quilt. Say you have one block of a very bright color, such as neon yellow. We need to have other blocks of neon yellow in the quilt.

Why. If there is only one neon block in your quilt, your eye will go to that block. Every time you look at the quilt, your eye first goes to that one block. To eliminate that, we will add other blank blocks of that neon to the quilt.

Adding additional blocks of neon will make that single neon block less important.  One bright block screams look at me! Look at me! Three bright blocks take away the power of that one bright block.

This is a subtle effect. You might dislike neon. You might also wish that those neon blank blocks weren’t in the quilt. Yet because they are in the quilt, the neon block with a graphic becomes less important. It won’t dominate the entire quilt. Yeah, you may hate neon and not want those fillers. But one neon block will scream, whereas, three are less noticeable. 

If you hate neon, don’t send us a neon T-shirt to put in your quilt. When one block is so much brighter than all the other blocks in your quilt, we will attempt to balance that bright block so it doesn’t dominate the quilt. 

Can I Tell You What Color(s) I Want for Fillers

You can and we will take that into consideration. Our quilts are works of art. They are not paint-by-numbers. We need the artistic freedom to create a balanced quilt. 

That said, you can tell us what colors you like. If we can use more of that color, we will. 

We might not be the right quilt maker for you and your T-shirts if you need to decide where each block goes. 

We like to work with customers to make great quilts. We have made over 10,000 quilts. We know what works and look great. We also know what doesn’t work and will make your quilt look awful.  You are going to have to trust us on this.

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