T-shirt/Memory Quilts

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.