Jul 29, 2006

Ahhhh.... The Memories


My 14yr old niece has been saving old tshirts and fabrics that have sentimental value and meaning for her. I bought her a Mickey & Minnie Mouse Florida tshirt when we took her to Disney World at the age of 7. At 14, she still loves that shirt and even tried it on before we cut it up. Why did we cut it up? To make her a Memory Quilt. Some shirts had logos, one was a puffed paint shirt we made together a few years ago. Other fabrics include basketball themes, Scooby Doo, favorite PJ's, school mascots, and pieces I used to make her outfits when she was a toddler. After each one was cut into squares she arranged them into a design she liked. Much to everyone's surprise, she is even going to cut up her Barney baby blanket that she's had since she was 2. We are going to put that on the backside of the quilt. Here's the layout:


It took us two days to cut out all the squares. We also managed to get the top two rows stitched together:



So far she thinks it "SO AWESOME!" We didn't anticipate it being as big as it is. She keeps commenting on how "ginormous" it is (a bit of an exaggeration). I told her that she'll never be cold and she'll always have a bit of home with her. She already has plans for taking it to college with her!

7 comments:

Kendra said...

My quilting Granma has made several of these for my mom and me. She's made a couple completely finshed quilts out of our shirts. For some of my shirts, I had her just cut them into squares and serge the edges together (makes it much easier to store those favorite shirts!). I think this is such a neat idea to make something useable out of all those collectible t-shirts.

Margaret said...

Your niece is right, it is awesome!!

Margaret

Singular Stitches said...

Oh, what a lovely Aunt you are!! That will be something she'll treasure forever! :o)

Singular Stitches said...

Oh, what a lovely Aunt you are!! That will be something she'll treasure forever! :o)

Shelleen said...

what a great quilt that will be and she can cherish forever.

Anonymous said...

you are such a cool aunt. The memories she has of you will be with her for a lifetime.

Carol said...

Do you have any tips or advice for making one or these quilts? I've never made a quilt of any kind and we have a bunch of t-shirts from my DD's softball days that we'd like to quilt. Yours is lovely and you neice is lucky to have you.