Making Memories using clothes

I'm working on 3 memory quilts for a customer using 18 plaid cowboy shirts and 8 pairs of pants. If you haven't done a memory quilt before, they can be challenging! As with this project, usually the clothes provided have been well worn--making some of them questionable to use because they are not going to hold up well as a quilt. One shirt in this bundle had to be rejected for that reason.

And since even quilters rarely wear all cotton clothes, the second challenge is working with a wide variety of fabrics---the shirts in this case are almost all a cotton/poly blend and the pants are also--but with some stretch in them. I've also done a memory quilt that used a fleece jacket, rayon blend swim trunks, a cotton T-shirt and nylon knit golf shirts--along with a few batiks I used with it! It all works, but you do need to think about using simple blocks without lots of small pieces.

A third challenge is that most of us tend to buy clothing in colors we like--and aren't thinking about how a quilter may need contrast in color and value in the future! So on one quilt, I had to deal with mostly black--prints, stripes,and solids! These current memory quilts are almost all blue plaids and khaki's! That's another reason that simple blocks are best--and remember that the quilt recipient will relish the memories and isn't worried about those design elements.

Another challenge is that often the recipient thinks they want a full bedsize quilt--but there isn't enough fabric in the clothes. Cutting from clothes doesn't garner the big cuts that you get from yardage. This is a major challenge in this project. We've reduced the size to nice lap quilt size--that way they can be used for wall hangings, too. But getting 3 quilts from the available cuts will be tricky!

My next few posts will be about accomplishing that(I hope!)--so join me as we work on these memory quilts.

these are the finished snowball blocks for one quilt--along with the cut off corners that will become half square triangles and be used in the border for another.