Friday, June 4, 2021

Menswear quilts

When I started my scrappy quilting adventure 10ish years ago, my stash was small and I didn't have a lot of fabric from which to pull.  Bonnie Hunter @quiltville_Bonnie was (and still is) the guru of scrap quilting. I bought her book: Scraps & Shirttails: Reuse, Re-purpose, Recycle! The Art of "Quilting Green"

(Image borrowed from Amazon) 


From this book and the follow-up, Scraps & Shirttails II: Continuing the Art of Quilting Green, I learned how beautiful mens' shirts can be! There is a lot of fabric in a XXL shirt and the colors and combinations are endless. My fabric stash up to that time was mostly Kona Solids and a few fat quarters I had picked up at various quilt shops. Thanks to thrift stores, rummage sales, church sales and even a few estate sales, I built my shirt collection up to the point that almost all of my fun quilts (quilts for myself) had a variety of shirt fabrics in them. 

A typical $10 - $15 purchase:

Just out of the bag

Deboned and folded

Ready for the stash!

Notice the awesome color variety in these cotton shirts :)

I recently finished a quilt I call "nacho daddy's quilt" which is made entirely from plaid shirts. Check it out:
Coco, my sewing buddy, making herself useful




All finished! Backing is super soft flannel (plaid, of course!) And yes, those are croquet wickets in the background.

I have a few more quilts made out of mens' shirts that I will share in upcoming blog posts. In the meantime, let's enjoy the beautiful June weather!

Quarantine Quilt #1, finale

I finally finished the brown quilt (previous post) and named it Quarantine Quilt #1. Not very creative, but I finished it after the shelter-in-place order was placed and our lives were suddenly changed. I decided to change it up a bit, and I'm glad I did.



A double border of half-square triangles add just the right amount of pizzazz! Turns out that the brown I was questioning looks amazing as a constant behind all the scrappy goodness :)


So many 4-squares from my 2" squares box! I'm forever using these for my leaders and enders, and a 64-square block (or four) makes an attractive backing. Don't you think?


The Baptist Fan panto is a computer-driven design I use with my Quilt Path - software hooked up to my APQS Millenium. 


                The backing is #andoverfabrics and the quilting is #baptistfan from #urbanelements