Once in awhile, someone asks me to do a T-shirt/Memory quilt. Sometimes more than one! I enjoy doing them. What's the difference between a T-shirt Quilt and a Memory Quilt? In away, they are all memory quilts, but a T-shirt quilt uses only T-shirts while a memory quilt can use other types of garments as well. So it's really just semantics.
It's a challenge to maximize the presence of each garment in the quilt. I don't just slap my 12.5" x 12.5" ruler on the front of the T-shirts to make 12" squares and turn those into even 5 column x 6 row quilts. That is certainly possible to do in some cases, but that's boring to me. So I have referred requests for that type of quilt on to others who will do it that way. If you ask me to do a T-shirt quilt, I will cut each graphic component to a nice size - not too big, not too small. Then I use the rest of the Ts to make fill in blocks and "puzzle" everything together. I use all the graphics - logos on sleeves, front graphics, back graphics - all graphics. I have even incorporated interesting labels.
And recently I've started doing some little machine embroidery designs if I find I have too much "empty" space. And of course I custom quilt each block.
I have done a number of T-shirt/Memory quilts in the last year. I have been negligent in posting about them so rounding up a few here. I'm currently (Apr 2021) working on a commission for 5 quilts for a family. These quilts have T-shirts, hoodies, jeans, other pant types, onesies, shirt shirts and even some boxer shorts worked into them. Lot's of fun for me. They will be a separate post once they are completed.
But for now - here are 2020 T-shirt/Memory quilts.
The above was commissioned by grandparents for their granddaughter who was graduating from university. It was a 2020 "COVID Grad". Apparently she liked it.
Below - two quilts. Commissioned by a young woman whose husband died the previous year at the age of 29. So sad.... Her late husband has a sister, who has twins. She wanted a quilt made of her husbands T-shirts for each of the twins. This was an interesting challenge - I wanted to get a bit of each shirt in each quilt. In the end, I'm really happy with the way they turned out. I apparently neglected to get better pix of the finished quilts but this will give you a sense of what they are. These were the first where I started putting in some machine embroidery although it doesn't show up in the pix unless you know what to look for.
Oh here (above) you can see a row of embroidered designs. Some little "monsters" because there are a couple of monster T-shirts and some Fire/Rescue as he apparently was a volunteer fire fighter.
More little monsters above.