Eight Shirts, Three Quilts

Last fall, I made two memory quilts for a coworker who lost her brother. She gifted those quilts to her mother and her sister-in-law. You can read about those quilts here. As soon as she shipped them off she started wishing she had one of her very own. Luckily, there was just enough shirt fabric to make one so that she would have her very own quilt to keep close.

If you look closely at this quilt, you will know which of the shirts were long sleeve and which were short sleeve. It was a challenge to even get one block out of a couple of these. I am very thankful for long sleeves for this project.

I had to use the pocket front for all but one of these shirts. The pockets could have been left unquilted but she requested them stitched down so a hand or foot would not get caught and tear the quilt. It would be fun to leave them unquilted if this were going to be hung on a wall, You could keep special notes or other memories in the pockets.

The backing is navy flannel just like the other two quilts. The first two quilts each had one of these photos on the back. This one has both! It will be easy to flip up a corner to see the picture. This photograph also shows the scrappy binding. I was not sure there was going to be enough shirt left for a binding, but there was. The binding scraps frame each of the pictures on the back.

All of the pictures are after the quilt was washed. The quilting is a simple meander in an off white thread to match the background fabric. This quilt was delivered earlier today and I could tell she was very happy to receive it.

I couldn't help but take a picture of our back yard bird set up. It's been so active lately, except when I scare them all off taking quilt photos.

Eight shirts, three quilts. So happy to have been a small part of saving these memories.