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Quilt Finish: Quilts from Beau

9/15/2018

3 Comments

 
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For the past 10 months I've been working on my first set of memory quilts.
My cousin passed away unexpectedly last December and I offered to make my aunt and uncle and his sister a memory quilt from my cousin's old shirts, shorts and pants (no t-shirts!). I wanted the quilts to look like traditional pieced quilts, not what I had always seen done for memory quilts - with large squares of fabric from shirts sewn together in a 1-square pattern (click here to see what I'm talking about). 

I had see this quilt on Instagram, and liked the idea of making a string quilt. I thought it would be a way to mix a lot of fabrics successfully, but wasn't sure how I wanted to construct the blocks.  The "Blue Strings" baby quilt that I just blogged about was my first attempt at constructing string blocks.  The primary color baby string quilt was my second attempt (though it's still waiting to be quilted).
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The two different construction methods that I used worked well enough, but after making these 2 quilts, I decided that with my cousins shirts I didn't want to mix all the different fabrics in one block and I didn't want to have to tear out foundation paper. In the end, I didn't use either method that I tested, and instead tried something new entirely, and I loved it.
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For my blocks, I cut apart the shirts and pants/shorts to make them in to the biggest flattest pieces that I could.  I also left pockets and buttons where I could.
Next, I cut 12 1/2" squares from the biggest pieces I had (the backs and arms of shirts and the legs of pants), and cut the rest of the smaller pieces in to strips of varying widths (from 1 1/4" - 2 3/4"). Once I had everything cut and could see what I had to work with, I separated the large 12 1/2" squares in to a set of dark squares for my aunt and uncle's quilt in Wisconsin, and a set of lighter squares for my cousin's quilt in Florida.  Then I went to work using the "slice and insert" method - slicing the 12 1/2" square and sewing in a strip of a contrasting fabric.  I opted to use 1 fabric for all the inserted strips in each block, and tried to keep things consistent. For example, I used all the strips from the camo shorts in navy blue 12 1/2" blocks, and strips from the black and white shirt in light blue squares, etc.  When I had inserted 4 strips in each square piece of fabric, I trimmed the block down to 10 1/2" square. 
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I backed both of the quilts with the same deer head print from Art Gallery fabrics (Hello Bear Buck), and quilted them with 1 1/2" spaced straight lines.  Since some of the clothing fabrics are heavier than quilting cotton, the quilts are also a little heavier than my normal quilts, but have a lovely drape and feel to them. I was worried about incorporating things like Carhartt canvas in the quilts, but actually found that the canvas was one of my favorite fabrics to work with - the more slippery synthetic shirt fabric not so much.

I am thrilled with how these "memory" quilts turned out, and with the fact that people don't immediately recognize that the fabrics in the quilts are old shirts and pants.  I think that they look like great quilts in themselves, and have special meaning to the people who will be using them.

Quilt Stats:
Both quilts finish at roughly 60" square (using a 6x6 layout and 36 blocks each).
Blocks finish at 10" x 10"
For pictures of these quilts in progress, please check out #quiltsfrombeau

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3 Comments
Nicole Hannah link
9/21/2018 05:21:54 pm

These are lovely. Really lovely and thoughtful. I'm sorry about your cousin but yay for nice quilts!

Reply
Mary D
10/24/2018 07:25:24 am

Your idea was a great one for memory quilts. The quilts are just lovely.

Reply
Sue
4/22/2020 06:18:29 am

Just beautiful. I will remember this. I have made several memory quilts. I made nine bow-tie pattern quilts out of my father-in-laws shirts, pajamas and seer-sucker suits for his grandchildren. He was a small town physician who always wore a bow tie and in summer he always wore a seer-sucker suit. I also loved that the quilts didn't immediately scream memory quilts. Well done you!!

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  • About Me
  • Blog
  • Commissions
  • Tutorials
    • Solid HRT Quilt
    • Solid HST Quilt
    • Going Places Quilt Tutorial
    • Star-in-a-Star Baby Quilt Tutorial
    • Scrappy Inner Star Quilt Pattern
    • Inner Star Quilt Pattern
    • HST Chaos
    • Scrappy Goose Quilt
    • Scrappy Patchwork Wreath Quilt & Block - Reg Size
    • Solid Wreath Block
    • Quilt Show Ribbon Tutorial
    • Double Bear Paw Block
    • Improv Sticks Border
    • Wreath Mega Block Quilt
  • Contact Me