Hi everybody, it’s Jenny from the MSQC.
And I’ve got a fun project for you today.
A lot of people ask me how do I make quilts from my loved one’s clothing.
Memory quilts, memory projects.
And so we’re going to talk a little bit about that today.
First of all there is a lot of fabric in a shirt.
So you’re going to be able to do several different things or maybe things for several
different people.
But the first thing I want to talk about today is this little lap quilt right here.
This is a little comfort quilt.
And it’s just made with ten squares, so ten inch blocks.
And we’ve got four across and five down.
And it’s just enough to cover you and kind of give you that comfort.
And so let’s talk about that with these shirts.
I’m just going to grab one of these shirts.
What you have to remember is a shirt is just fabric and it’s just sewn together.
And we can cut it up.
Now I’ve already cut, I’ve used a lot of the back out of this one so here’s my
front is in tact.
But I’ve already used the back.
But it’s handy to have a guide when you’re going to cut.
So what I did with the quilt that’s behind me is I just took a ten square ruler like
this.
And I just laid it on.
And I cut out my squares with a rotary cutter.
And that’s just, it’s exactly what you need to make those squares because you want
them the same size and you just want 20 of them.
And you’re going to go through shirts.
Now if run out of fabric, big, on the big areas you can open up a sleeve.
Like we’ll take the sleeve right here and we can just open this up.
And if I just put my scissor right along where the seam is right here I ought to be able
to pretty fast slide down there, just like this.
And then again you have a great big wide open space to cut your square out of.
So you can get squares out of lots of the parts of these shirts.
Now if you end up where you have a seam in the middle, you can have a seam in there.
That’s alright.
It doesn’t matter.
What we’re doing is we’re trying to cut ten inch squares from these, from these fat
pieces of fabric.
And that being said you can cut any size square that you want actually and just sew them together
and make a quilt.
I’m just using tens because that’s easy and that’s what I did.
Alright the next project I want to talk about is this little pillow right here.
And this is really an easy project because this is the front placket where the buttons
are.
And this is something that’s nice, you know, just to hug and snuggle.
If you need a hug and somebody isn’t there for you anymore and you just need to hug them.
This is a great little project for that.
So what I did was I took the front of my shirt.
And like this one right here.
And I left the buttons buttoned and in tact.
And I just trimmed it up to the size pillow that I wanted and cut the front and the back
at the same time and sewed them together.
Then I sewed it all the way around the outside edge.
Then when you’re ready to stuff it, you just open this part and stuff your stuffing
in.
So it makes it very, very quick and easy.
And a really, you know just a quick project because all you’re basically doing is just
sewing all the way around this.
Then you’re going to open this up and push your stuffing in until it’s nice and fluffy.
The other thing I did was one of these great, this is a fun table runner.
And if you have a loved one who wore a lot of ties, take a look at this.
This is really fun.
This is also a fun father’s day project.
If you want to, you know, pull in your loved one’s ties.
My husband has a bunch of ties so I thought this would be a fun thing to do.
So basically what I did on this was I cut a piece from my shirt.
And the piece is, the piece was seven by, how big is this?
By 14.
Seven by 14.
Then I took a tie and I have some ties here.
And I’ll show you how I did this.
So here’s a little tie.
And this is all, you know, this is one of those things where you can make it any size
you want.
Let me go ahead and take this little sleeve right here.
And I’m going to cut a seven by 14 inch piece out of here.
Just so you can see how I’m, how I’m cutting this.
I’m going to straighten this up right here where I know I have a nice big area and take
off that little piece.
And I’m going to come over here and I’m going to cut this piece here.
Now what I’m doing right now is I’m just cutting off this part so that I can now lay
this nice and flat.
When you cut up a shirt, what’s interesting, you know in our minds, it’s like, it’s
a shirt but really when you open it up like this it’s just fabric.
So I’m going to straighten off this edge here.
And of course when you do it you’re going to want to get as much use out of it as possible.
So I’m going to straighten this.
This gives me a flat edge to go on.
And I’m going to come over and I’m going to count.
And again this is up to you.
However wide you want it you can do it that way.
So I’m going to count, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,
eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.
We’re going to come over 15.
And then I’m going to cut this down to seven.
So I’m going to get one straight edge on here.
And I’ve got to come in a little bit to get a straight edge.
And then I’m going to count over seven.
And that’s going to give me my piece.
And see here’s this one right here.
It’s the same fabric.
And I’m going to give this a little bit of a press so it lays nice and flat.
Let me move this out of the way so you can see this.
And then I’m going to decide how long I want my tie.
Now I cut them all the same, once I decided that length, I cut them all the same.
And so I’m going to lay this on here like this.
And I’m just going to cut it right here.
And just cut that off like that.
Then what I did is I took some of this easy seam, this fusible.
This is such a great little product.
And it makes it stick on.
So I’m going to put this fusible on either side like this and some right down here on
the tip, here and here.
Then you have to iron it to make sure that it sticks on there.
And so I’m just going to really easily come across here and give that a press.
And then we’re going to peel away this paper like that.
And it should leave your little sticky seam.
Mine is lifting so I must have peeled it too fast.
That’s alright.
I’ll just kind of arrange it on there because I’m going to iron it to stick down anyway.
It keeps sticking to my fingers.
See if I can get that off.
There we go.
That’s one of those comedy of errors, isn’t it?
Alright let me pull this one off on this side.
Hopefully this one will adhere.
I probably didn’t let it cool long enough.
There we go.
See that one is nice on there.
Let me get this little end right here.
And then we’re going to take off this little points right here.
And then this one over here.
There we go.
Alright so now I’m going to place my tie on here.
I’m going to keep the edge of the tie right here so it will be enclosed in the seam.
Center it up.
Make sure it’s nice and centered.
And then I’m going to go over to the ironing board and I’m going to press it so that
that little sticky strip now glues it on there.
And then I like to flip it over because the tie is awfully thick and this side will hit
the glue much faster.
.
Now what I did on these ties, what I’m going to do on here is just stitch right along the
edge, just a tiny, a tiny little stitch right along the edge and very close to the edge.
There we go.
And I’m going to just put this.
And when I do an edge stitch, what I do is I make sure my presser foot is like right
in the middle of that toe.
It’s lined up right along the side.
So I’m just going to go down here along this side.
And because it’s all adhesed into place, it’s not moving anywhere.
Come around the side and come up this side.
There we go.
And you can see right on here that stitch line barely shows as I’m stitching along
that edge.
And of course I would have, you know, I would have probably used a darker thread like a
maroon thread so that it would really hide in there.
Then you’re just going to make as many of these as you want long.
And you’re just going to rotate them back and forth as you put them together.
Here let me move this one up here so you can see it better.
So see how this one goes this way.
The next one goes this way.
There’s not even a border on here.
We just laid them all out like that and put them together.
And then we just machine quilted over the top of it.
You can see our little, our little swirly designs on here.
And it machine quilts the whole thing.
So these are just a couple of ideas for you to do.
Quick and easy ideas to make some memory clothing.
If it is a female in your family who has gone, I mean this works with her clothing as well.
It’s just going to be a more feminine look to it.
And just as easy.
Now if you’re working with anything with knits, any type of knit, you want to stabilize
that first.
So you’re going to iron that knit onto a stabilizer then it also become just like fabric.
But if you’re dealing cotton shirts and things like that, just a piece of cake.
Just cut out the size you want and put them together to make the projects.
And remember that once you make a square any of the other projects that we’ve done with
squares will work just as well for making memory quilts out of your loved ones clothing.
So we hope you enjoyed this tutorial on how to make projects from your loved one’s clothes
and Memory Quilts from the MSQC.