Shirts become quilts

I have always considered recycling a noble idea and in quilt making it adds a layer of emotional connection to the projects if you have fabrics from special people in your life. It isn't always so easy to get it but the opportunity crystallized when I heard my pals Tom and Peter had a bag full old shirts waiting to be donated to Good Will. I offered to take them to donate, in exchange for a chance to select out what I wanted for quilting. They accepted the deal and I picked up the bags. I had them a good while before I was ready to use them.

shirts cut and hung for the first time on felt design wall

Then began my struggles of finding the way to use these many varied sports shirts. They are almost all made from heavier fabrics than is not normally used for quilt piecing. The colors are varied and each one has a nice hand. I began by cutting off the cuffs, collars and heavy seams leaving all the shirt shaped parts and pieces. Then I started hanging various pieces of them on the felt design wall. That was a surprise, none of these fabrics would cling to the felt, I had to pin every corner to make them stay up.

Still it was interesting to see the shapes that were part of the old shirt construction. I looked and studied and fiddled with them, moving them a little less than usual due to the hanging problems. Then an idea came to me: perhaps it was time to try a curved seam using the curve of the sleeves where they meet the shoulder. It wasn't difficult to sew a long gentle curve. The curves became a new design element, a new way of seeing the surface gently softened but it added a challenge beyond the curved seams. Later piecing in the angled intersections of the stacked triangle shapes. It was sort of like a very wide Y seam but with four pieces at four angles. 

With some help from my resident advisor, we decided to remove the plaids and work with the solid colored shirts and one striped fabric from one of my father's flannel shirts that was a color theme match. Burgundy, creamy white and the stripes needed a little more fabric to finish.  I went hunting at Salvation Army Store where I found a huge steel blue-gray linen shirt. It worked into the design as a break between the matched sets of burgundy and white sleeves.

experimenting with the new curves on the design wall. This shows where four angled seams came together to fill in the missing triangles in the center. 

Once the blue-gray shirt and stripes were inserted between the white and burgundy the insert looked too wide. Eventually I was inspired to add an S curve and flip the center section to break up the wide area of blue and stripes. Using a home made paper pattern for my big S curve so both sides of the S were the same curve shape when they were flipped helped keep the curves equal.

paper pattern used to match cutting the long S curves

The curve was a nice addition to the open space that was a little boring before I flipped that section and it added more curves to expand the original design idea. Some of the remaining shirt fabric made a long string of traditional "sawtooth" using blue and burgundy and white edged with cheddar cloth from a vintage line of quilters fabric that happens to match a tiny line of gold running through the striped shirt fabric. Making sawtooth strips for the first time was a delight. Even using linen and moleskin fabric to make them, if a little more difficult, wasn't a barrier to my joy as it came together.

before adding the S curve in the center section and with the sawtooth strips. 

Initially the plan was to use these sawtooth strips as part of the curved top design. Then again with some help from my resident advisor I realized that the sawtooth strips powerful graphic design overwhelmed the soft curves. He casually suggested to take those out and use them for another quilt. After a night's sleep on the idea, I loved it. Realizing I can make a second quilt that is totally different using some of the same fabrics felt like an exciting complement to this quilt. I continued the curvy top by adding stripes of all the colors in the 4 shirts around the edges of the central sleeve area to finish  this quilt I now call the Wave Shirt Quilt.   

quilting with ecru white perle cotton #8 which I then repeated with navy blue in between the white lines. 

The same big S paper pattern worked nicely to mark the curved quilting lines across the entire quilt with my favorite Hera tool.  It's filled with a nice warm wool batting and the back is a soft burgundy cotton sheeting. The label on the back is hand embroidery with white perle cotton on the blue-gray linen patch. It is bound with solid navy blue cotton.

I hand quilted alternating lines of ecru white and navy blue perle cotton #8

Label embroidery patch

completed Wave Shirt Quilt 

detail of blue and white quilting 

finished Wave Shirt Quilt 46" x 60"

Stay tuned for the Sawtooth Shirt Quilt reveal coming soon. 

Improvising again

Burgundy and navy blue were my theme colors for this quilt, sized 45x68 inches. 

I began with a small scrap of diamonds I had left over from the "add a border swap"  building a bigger block using those two colors. I liked the result and kept building new  blocks, just short of a full bed sized quilt because this project was getting a washable wool batting. Never having used wool batting before, I thought it wise to begin with a small quilt.

my first block with the burgundy diamonds left over from add a border swap

 I was working on this during the week of the big Navy Yard massacre and I missed picking up my "Orange Explains It" quilt  from Anacostia Arts Center because police hand closed the 11th Street bridge and I didn't know any other way to get over to that neighborhood. I was feeling sad most of that week due to the tragedy but I had my quilt to kept me busy. I was very excited about the developing blocks and didn't dwell on the news coverage after the first day. It was nice that the arts center asked to keep the quilt for a while longer. I was happy to lend it to them for a extra long display.

back is navy and white plaid with burgundy and navy blue Perle #8 quilting 

crossing lines of burgundy and navy blue Perle #8 quilting 

Burgundy and Blue finished throw sized quilt 45x 68 inches

This past Saturday I enjoyed sharing my two finished quilts with my friends at the Washington DC Modern Quilt Guild meeting at the library in Rose Hill, Virginia a subdivision in Alexandria. The meeting was only a block from my Uncle Bernard and Aunt Betty's old home. I knew the neighborhood from our holiday visits during the 1970s. It hasn't changed much excepting a nice new Indian restaurant in the shopping center across the street where I ate with Aubrie one of the local quilters from the group who recommended it as a new hot dining spot. We were surprised to find her newly wed husband and his pal, a civil war re-enactor there and shared a table with them. They were curious what we do at guild meetings and we tried to explain it but if you are curious you can read a after meeting round up on our blog and see photos of my guild's quilting work from our show and tell here:    http://tinyurl.com/qa24mr9

These guys both hand sew their own uniforms for the recreations of various civil war military units they portray at the mock battles both Northern and Southern units! Sounds like fun to me but I don't know much about military history nor guns so I am happy to focus on domestic quilting history in my sewing. I was surprised to hear they thought they knew a tailor in Colonial Williamsburg who led me and some of my family on a tour of a 18th century costume exhibition there about nine years ago. It's a small world.

new quilt under construction

Recently between the walks through wonderful woodlands, fields and aquatic gardens I finished up this border on a quilt block.

Add a border block "basket weave" completed with Seminole diamonds and navy blue stripes. 

close up of my added border to the "basket weave" block from the swap. 

This month the felt wall has been loaded up with bits and pieces of burgundy and navy blue, as a theme I picked up from a border added to a swap block from the "add a border" group on flickr.com. 

my first improvisational block using the three burgundy diamonds left over

Keith's garden bouquet in the woods surrounded by vines 

another bouquet image showing poison ivy to the extreme lower left... 

More blocks developed in the next several days because I caught a particularly bad case of poison ivy while out on a photo shoot with Keith in our local park which is over run with the stuff. The irony of that was, I made a point of showing a stranger we met walking outside the park what to watch out for if he walked his dog in the park on the newly restored trails. Ha ha ha the joke's on me because I got the bumps and hours of itching misery to prove I know what it looks like but maybe not the sense to know that you can't wear the same shoes exposed to poison ivy later bare foot after stepping on the ivy vines. Anyway the next several July like hot days I needed to be bare skinned and in the house with cool air conditioning just to cope with my reaction. I tried to put that time to good use making these new improvisational blocks.

It's almost complete now after my second bout of poison ivy attacked me from our trip to the Stuart Signal hill trail last Friday. I don't know if this set of red bumps was newly acquired or just more from the original poison ivy oils on my old shoes, either way I have kept busy to keep my mind occupied on good things.

This quilt is going to be hand quilted with navy and burgundy perle thread #8 and I am going to use a wool batting for the first time. It is full of heirloom fabrics and a few of my favorite shirts. In particular the big plaid summer shirt of burgundy, red, white, baby and navy blue and a little pale yellow. Maybe you see some of your fabrics donated in the Wash. DC modern quilt guild's scrap swap? Thanks for all the good energy and good fabric scraps it adds color and patterns to my palette I wouldn't have otherwise.

Preview of the top improvisation #2 in burgundy and navy blue