Quilt of Memories

Last weekend Kevin and I went down to Los Angeles for our engagement party and to spend the weekend with family. It was all quite nice and we got to show my parents the Unitarian Universalist church where the wedding will be in 2 years.

Anyways, while there I went through more of my stuff in my old room. I didn't get rid of much stuff....i'm too attached to all of my toys and books that I can one day give to my own children. So the toys and books remain on shelves and in boxes waiting to be used again one day. I did bring back a few odds and ends but the most important thing or should I say things is a huge box of old tee shirts and sweatshirts. Each shirt has a personal meaning to me and I have held on to them for nearly 20 years.

Box full of shirts to make a quilt

I decided that instead of leaving them in a drawer or in a box in a closet I would make a quilt out of them. I thought this would be an easy task. A few snip snips, arrange them in a quilt shape and sew together. Needless to say I was wrong.

Once I started sorting through the pile today I found it difficult to even fathom cutting them up, which is odd considering some of them I have never even worn, I have just kept them because I liked the design on the front. Regardless of that, I looked online for how to make a quilt out of tee shirts and everyone makes it sound as easy as I had first thought....but I have way too many shirts to make just one quilt.

As I sorted through the pile figuring out how big the quilt tiles should be I realized that some of the designs are only about 2 inches in size while some are almost 2 feet. So now I am trying to figure out the best way to proceed since I will obviously need more than one quilt. So to get some inspiration I looked online at many t-shirt quilts that people have done and I found one that I especially like. I found it through google images and it is on keywestquilts.com. You can see it below:

Quilt I found online that I really like

It is a classic style and oddly girlish but I love the simplicity of it. Of course I would never use pink as it would clash with everything I own but I think I am going to make my quilts similar to this one.

After more than an hour of obsessing over this t-shirt quilt I was feeling a little overwhelmed, so I piled everything back in the box and put it in the other room. I guess I'll work on it another time, but at least I have narrowed down how I want the quilt to look.....now to just get up the guts to cut my precious t-shirts. Hopefully with time I will realize that the memories in the t-shirts will be transformed into a quilt of memories.