The Carpenter's Daughter Who Quilts

Tag: memory quilts

  • Memory Quilts from Dad’s Shirts: A Year in Review

    Hi, I am  very close to having a year’s time involved in my memory quilt project. I started it after Thanksgiving last year. Our Dad passed away in March of 2016. He was a Farmer and a Crop Consultant. He had a vast wardrobe of plaid shirts and chambray and denim work shirts. This project originally started with me just wanting to make a quilt for my husband and maybe my kids. I never imagined how far a collection of 30 plaid shirts and 5 to 7 denim shirts would take me. I have put my entire heart and soul into creating as many quilts as I could. I am up to 11 different tops and have fabric left, and need to create 5 to 7 more.

    I will give a quick review of the completed tops and give links to the blog posts, if you missed them from when published.

    This quilt top is made from the popular My Guy quilt pattern. It could be originally found in American Patchwork & Quilting magazine in their June 2009 issue. This quilt of course will be going to my husband. You can read more about my process here and here.

    This quilt top is made from Plus Squared by Emily Dennis. This uses pieces from all 30 different plaids and uses a denim work shirt as the center squares. This quilt will be going to my Mother inlaw. You can read more about my process here. Our three legged rescue cat, Clarence had to show off his modeling skills in this photo.

    This quilt is one that I have decided to call Workshirt Mosaic. I think it was made from 5 different chambray and denim workshirts and then I picked my favorite blue plaid shirt as an accent block. I remember purchasing it for Dad for his birthday one year. This quilt was designed  from using a tutorial by Emily Dennis for a quilt made from two colors of charm pack squares. I drew the design out on a graph paper and carried the design out a little on each side to make it larger. You can read more about my process here and there is links to the tutorial found there as well. This will  be going to one of my nieces.

    This quilt is made from the Uptown quilt pattern by Cluck Cluck Sew. I divided  up the blocks switching out half the position of the plaids and denims. This quilt will be going to one of my nieces. You can read more about my process here.

    This quilt is made from the original sized Swoon pattern by ThimbleBlossoms. The blocks finished at 24 inches. I chose to add the tiny denim sashing stones as added interest.This will be going to our sister, Barb. There was a Swoon quiltalong online starting in January. It was held for the first three months. I was able to piece 4 Swoon quilts in 2.5 months. I am quite proud of that accomplishment. You can read more about my process here, here, and here.

    This is a Scrappy Patchwork Swoon and it has pieces from all 30 of Dad’s shirts. This is a pattern by Thimbleblossoms. This quilt will be going to our sister, Joyce. You can read more about my process here,

    This is another Scrappy Patchwork Swoon and is created in the same colors as the first but positions switched. This will be going to our sister, Judy. When creating any of the Swoon quilts, you will be creating alot of half square triangles. It makes good sense to draw another line to create an additional smaller HST that you can use in another project. You can read more about my process here.

    This design was created from laying out leftover HSTs. This will have a wide navy border added to the outside in near future to finish off this top. This was created from the leftovers of the red background Swoon. This will likely go to one of our nephews.  I don’t think I blogged about these yet. I know I shared photos on Instagram. I saw a similar top made from a fellow Swoon quiltalong participant on IG.

    This quilt top was created from the leftover HSTs from the blue background scrappy patchwork Swoon. This will have a wide red border added to the outside.  Adding borders will make these top approximately 72 inches square. This will likely go to one of our nephews.

    This fun quilt is Dogs in Sweaters by Elizabeth Hartman. I chose 15 of my favorite plaids for their sweaters. I added either red, navy or black as the coordinating sweater trims. This quilt will be going to my son.  You can read more about my process here.

    This quilt was made from the Moda Bake Shop tutorial for the Woodruff quilt by Cake Stand Quilts. This top was the first of the 11 to be quilted and bound. It was gifted to our niece, who was married the end of October and this quilt was on display at the reception. This was a small  way for Grandpa to be able to attend her wedding in spirit. You can read about my process here.

    My wonderful sister inlaw( who was the Mother of the bride ) machine embroidered a patch for each of the memory quilts for me. We had seen the idea for these on Pinterest. They make the quilts extra special.

    I would love to be able to have as many of these quilts quilted by Christmas as possible. I have had a couple rough months this summer with feeling poorly and then my main sewing machine went up in smoke. You can read about that tale here. I have collected many new quilt patterns this summer.  I am always trying to find new ways to use Dad’s shirts but don’t worry I do also plan to make some non-plaid quilts in the near future. New patterns is a way to make up for the many that I lost last year when our computer was struck by lightning.

    I will be linking up and sharing this blog post with various linky parties that you can find in my Linky Party link page at top of the blog.

    Thank you for stopping by and reading my blog. Welcome to all the new readers this week!

    Happy Sewing,

    Shelley

  • Dogs in Sweaters: Dad’s Shirts Memory Quilt Project

    Hi, I am happy to share that I have completed another memory quilt top made from Dad’s plaid shirts. This makes 10 different quilt designs that I have made for memory quilts so far.  I used the Dogs in Sweaters by Elizabeth Hartman quilt pattern. It is a fun design. It does take a bit of time to make as each dog has 57 pieces and many of them are quite small. There was 150 little 1 inch squares needed for this quilt. I cut and labeled everything into individual ziplock sandwich bags.

    I used 15 different shirts for my dog sweaters. The pattern is written that you can use 5 prints and cut 3 dog sweaters out of each color. I chose to add sunglasses to 2 dogs as my applique fabric was large enough to cut 2 from.

    These are the initial parts all pieced for building our dogs.

    More building of the dog bodies. I had initially laid out my dog sweater plaids in rows so I knew where I wanted the colors to end up. I wish I would have snapped a photo of it. I just did my best to always keep the largest sweater pieces in the same order. Always trying to remember that 9 dogs faced left and 6 dogs faced right.

    Dogs 1 through 4. I shared this photo on my Instagram and thankfully, someone told me that dog 3 had his legs going in the wrong direction. I would have been very upset to have pieced the entire top and missed that.

    Dogs 5 through 8. I chose red, navy and black as my sweater bands. I did my best to mix them up each row.

    Dogs 9 and 10

    Dog 11 and Dog 3 now with his legs going in the “right” direction or that is facing left.

    Dogs 12 through 15

    Dog 12 is made with my favorite of Dad’s shirts. I also used that plaid as the focus print in the Workshirt Mosaic quilt I made.

    This is the Workshirt Mosaic quilt I made from Dad’s workshirts.

    I decided to add glasses also to  dog number 4. 

    Here is another look at the full top pieced together. I am still deciding how I can quilt it. I found a blue bandana paisley type print fabric with dogs in it that I think I will be using to piece the back. I am going to show it to my son first to make sure he approves of it.

    I will be linking up this flimsy finish with Show Off Saturday,  Can I get a Whoop Whoop Fridays? , Needle and Thread Thursday and TGIFF.

    Happy Sewing,

    Shelley

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  • Scrappy Patchwork Swoon: Dad’s Shirts Memory Project times two

    Hi,

    I am happy to share more of my completed Swoon quilt tops this week. In this post, I am sharing the scrappy patchwork Swoons I have created for my two sisters inlaw from Dad’s plaid shirts. They chose coordinating solid colors so it was easy to create quilts that were opposites of each other.

    This quilt has 576 little patchwork plaid squares. The overall construction of the quilt design uses the same faster techniques you would learn from the Swoon 16 quilt pattern. This quilt is red and navy but the navy shows up way darker than it is in person. We chose to make the outer border the same color as the background.  It finishes at 72 inches square.

    There are so many ways one could quilt this design. I wish I had FMQ figured out on my machine but I do not. And it is not in the budget to send these memory quilts out to be long armed. I saw a friend online did a nice allover crosshatch to the scrappy one she finished earlier this year, and she said it took her 20 hours. That doesn’t scare me.

    This is the second scrappy patchwork Swoon. Opposites of the first. This is a little more true to the color of navy blue. It seemed to take longer to create all the 64 patch blocks for this one. I counted and counted and continued to sew and thought for sure I was going to have cut more strips from the shirts. I did end up with 10 extra 16 patch blocks.

    I didn’t notice until taking this photo today, that I have a few rather dark plaids clustered together in the center block. Too late to change that.

    When making this you are creating HSTs from the patchwork pieced squares, there is too much time and effort in this  to just toss those extra pieces so I drew an additional line and created a smaller HST. Since I am making two quilts in same colors that makes double the newly created HSTs and add in those extra sewn 16 patch blocks, I am on my way to creating a third quilt design from the extra pieces.

    This would be too much fabric to toss into the scrap bin.

    This of course is a screen shot off of Instagram on what I have ideas  to create from all my extra pieces. Littlecabininthewoods on IG stated that hers was 43 inches before adding white borders.  This would be a great start to making  a medallion center for another quilt. I can make two of these medallions with opposite colors in the two sections which would be a starting point for two more quilts for family members. Or somehow put them all together into one large design. I am leaning towards the two quilts. The originals go to the two sisters and the opposite coordinating additional quilts could go to one of their daughters.

    I hope to lay out my pieces and come up with  a design this weekend or beginning of the next week. I have two other quilts that need to be quilted this week before I start on any of the memory quilts. I have one basted and need to get the other basted. They are pieced from similar fabrics so maybe I can use similar thread colors to quilt. They have been on the pile to quilt for way to long and the one can be delivered to it’s recipient next week with a quilt that they purchased earlier this year from me.

    I am hosting the Thank God It’s Finished Friday linky party this week. There will be a separate post for the linky party. I will probably summarize these two posts and give links back here if someone wanted to read more on the finished tops.

    Hope you all have a great weekend.

    Happy Sewing,

    Shelley