Sawtooth Shirt Quilt

The Sawtooth Shirt Quilt began as part of the first shirt quilt, as you see in this photograph of my sketch on the felt wall. With some help from my advisor, I avoided  ruining the soft look of the curves in the Wave Shirt Quilt with these bold graphic sawtooth strips. They were set aside for a second project which is finished this week. 

Wave Shirt quilt with sawtooth strips on felt wall

I had a lot of sawtooth made out of three repurposed shirts, a blue-gray linen and the burgundy and white shirts from my pals Tom and Peter.  The sawtooth strips are edged with long vintage printed gold fabric and some wider blue or more burgundy shirt fabric. To make the second design I went looking in my pile of yardage fabrics, where I found a blue and orange-gold homespun plaid, also a thrift store find, that seemed to work into the color scheme quite well. This homespun looks and feels like a shirt fabric making a nice complement to the others from real shirts. Then, I wanted something to lighten the whole picture and realized I had some natural beige linen that would be a nice soft light to add to the mostly dark composition. Beige linen makes a good resting spot for the eye as well as a place to show off the hand quilting in the overall design. This top finished up being 8 inches taller than the Wave Shirt Quilt because I had so much of the sawtooth strip made. Since I was thinking about my friends who inspired the quilts the differences in the two men felt like they are reflected in the different designs using their shirts.

Finished Sawtooth Shirt Quilt. 46"x 68"

On the back again in a thrift store I found a beautiful burgundy cotton sheeting and I had solid burnt orange yardage that together would make this quilt back a little different from the Wave Shirt Quilt while a little the same. I was lucky to find a rusty orange perle cotton #12 at Suzzie's Quilt shop in Manassas to complement the homespun plaid and set to work quilting straight away.

back of the Sawtooth Shirt Quilt

For the quilting design I chose to follow the 45 degree angles in the saw tooth's half triangle squares as my pattern lines. It was a coincidence that they were going in opposite directions on the two sections of the quilt top. When I finished basting the layers of cotton, linen top and back together with a fine wool batting, I used the Hera tool with a long metal straight edge to mark diagonal lines across the majority of the top, then shorter lines in the other direction making a arrow point angled design where the two sections meet. 

label is hand embroidery on a blue-gray linen scrap including the content to help advise for cold water wash and low temperature drying.  

Sawtooth Shirt Quilt 46"x 68"

Wave Shirt Quilt finished 46"x 60"

side by side two quilts made from Tom, Peter, my father Clarence and some anonymous fellow's shirts.