MarthaT

A friend of mine asked me to make a memory quilt for her 18-yr. old niece using the girl's late father's shirts. About half of them are dress shirts (mostly white) and the other half are knit polo-type shirts. Any suggestions of how to use them together in a throw-sized quilt? She is leaving the design up to me. I have light weight, iron-on interfacing to put on the back of the knit fabric so it won't stretch. I am considering something like a Disappearing 9-Patch starting with larger squares, maybe 8 in. He was a Tennessee fan and there is one orange shirt in the pile with a T on it. That needs to be the focal point. Thought maybe I could use the orange as the center block of the D9P so that it is scattered throughout the quilt. Any tips and other suggestions for patterns would be appreciated.

feline fanatic

Well you definitely want to put some kind of iron on interfacing on the knits to make them more stable. Like you would for a T-shirt quilt. It can be done but it is not fun to mix the two. I once did a memory quilt for a client that mixed knits and cottons and I wasn't too far in before I regretted taking on the job. I hated working with the knits, even with a stabilizer on them. Seams were a real pain when mixing the two. Now one thing that might work for you is to make the backing out of the knits (still with a fusible interfacing on them) and just sew large patches together, like 12" or bigger, much like you would a T-shirt quilt. Then you can do more piecing on the top with the cotton dress shirts.

Tartan

You want to look at the method for square in a square quilt that someone posted a youtube link to. The white shirt fabric could be cut into large squares, the 5 inch square is centered in the middle and then the larger squares is folded and sewn twice.
It was posted by BettyGee under Fold and Sew Quilt Blocks-Pure Genius

MarthaT

I just started laying out the shirts to try to get a sense of color layout and realized they are XXXL, so I will have plenty of fabric per shirt. Even the sleeves have a good chunk of fabric in them.

Sewnoma

I'm (very, very slowly) working on a memory quilt out of MY late father's clothes. Like your batch, it's a mix of woven cotton/polyester blend work shirts, polo shirts, tee-shirts, and also a few things like heavier over-shirts; some of which are cotton flannel, some are wool.

I'm doing the whole quilt as a foundation-pieced crazy quilt. I have cut thin muslin into 13" squares and (when my emotions allow) I am slowly piecing down bits of his shirts onto that. I'm trying to keep things like pockets and cuffs mostly intact so it's a weird quilt (but I was a weird kid and he was my weird dad so it suits) - some pieces are rather large and for those I'm sort of pre-quilting it (but still no batting, just the clothing fabric & the muslin) by doing SITD around pockets or along seams or even hiding tack stitches within embroidered parts of the polo's; wherever I can hide the stitches. I figure the more I stitch it down to the muslin the less shifting and puckering I'll deal with later. So far it seems to be working!

When I'm done, I'll trim the squares to 12-1/2" and then assemble them. I haven't decided how I'll quilt it yet, I might just tie or tack-stitch the layers together, since it'll have so much stitching in the top layer already. I also might just use a layer of flannel for batting (or nothing at all), as it's going to end up being quite bulky and lumpy in spots.

cindi

I just made a memory quilt with nothing but knit polo shirts I used the "Candy Hearts" pattern from Moda Bakeshop, and it turned out just beautiful. It's a baby quilt, but could easily be adapted for a larger quilt, is perfect for a girl, and one of the easiest and quickest quilts I've ever made. Funny enough, I had enough fabric to make the hearts just from the sleeves of the shirts! So I'm making a 2nd one for my SIL from the rest of the shirts. I backed each sleeve with Pellon 906F. Here's a picture of it on the frame. Sorry, I don't have a pic of the whole quilt! I also backed each heart with an extra layer of batting so they would puff out a bit.... The pattern is here: http://www.modabakeshop.com/2010/03/...;-♥.html

Cari-in-Oly

That quilt is gorgeous, well done!

Cari

Dina

I agree! What a beautiful quilt!!!!!!

Dina

MarthaT

Thanks for all the advice.

I've sketched out the idea I've come up with. I will make the large rectangles from the knit shirts (with light-weight iron-on interfacing on the back) and the narrow strips of the dress shirt fabric. Cindi, I like your hearts suggestion and may add some here and there.

Shucks...couldn't get my sketch to load. Here is a link to the pattern I got my inspiration from. Of course it will not be in these girlie colors, but men's shirts. What is your reaction?

http://www.sewwequilt.com/2011/08/gu...ters-jera.html

feline fanatic

Great idea for mixing the knits and cottons. Will be much easier than what I did. This will be very much like doing a T-shirt quilt with cotton sashing. Easy peezy. I have done tons of T-shirt quilts that way and it wasn't hard at all. The one I made many years ago had a lot of HST in it and it was nightmarish.