Hi everybody, it’s Jenny from the MSQC. And I’ve got a fun project for you today. A lot of people ask me how do I make quilts
from my loved one’s clothing. Memory quilts, memory projects. And so we’re going to talk a little bit
about that today. First of all there is a lot of fabric in a
shirt. So you’re going to be able to do several
different things or maybe things for several different people. But the first thing I want to talk about today
is this little lap quilt right here. This is a little comfort quilt. And it’s just made with ten squares, so
ten inch blocks. And we’ve got four across and five down. And it’s just enough to cover you and kind
of give you that comfort. And so let’s talk about that with these
shirts. I’m just going to grab one of these shirts. What you have to remember is a shirt is just
fabric and it’s just sewn together. And we can cut it up. Now I’ve already cut, I’ve used a lot
of the back out of this one so here’s my front is in tact. But I’ve already used the back. But it’s handy to have a guide when you’re
going to cut. So what I did with the quilt that’s behind
me is I just took a ten square ruler like this. And I just laid it on. And I cut out my squares with a rotary cutter. And that’s just, it’s exactly what you
need to make those squares because you want them the same size and you just want 20 of
them. And you’re going to go through shirts. Now if run out of fabric, big, on the big
areas you can open up a sleeve. Like we’ll take the sleeve right here and
we can just open this up. And if I just put my scissor right along where
the seam is right here I ought to be able to pretty fast slide down there, just like
this. And then again you have a great big wide open
space to cut your square out of. So you can get squares out of lots of the
parts of these shirts. Now if you end up where you have a seam in
the middle, you can have a seam in there. That’s alright. It doesn’t matter. What we’re doing is we’re trying to cut
ten inch squares from these, from these fat pieces of fabric. And that being said you can cut any size square
that you want actually and just sew them together and make a quilt. I’m just using tens because that’s easy
and that’s what I did. Alright the next project I want to talk about
is this little pillow right here. And this is really an easy project because
this is the front placket where the buttons are. And this is something that’s nice, you know,
just to hug and snuggle. If you need a hug and somebody isn’t there
for you anymore and you just need to hug them. This is a great little project for that. So what I did was I took the front of my shirt. And like this one right here. And I left the buttons buttoned and in tact. And I just trimmed it up to the size pillow
that I wanted and cut the front and the back at the same time and sewed them together. Then I sewed it all the way around the outside
edge. Then when you’re ready to stuff it, you
just open this part and stuff your stuffing in. So it makes it very, very quick and easy. And a really, you know just a quick project
because all you’re basically doing is just sewing all the way around this. Then you’re going to open this up and push
your stuffing in until it’s nice and fluffy. The other thing I did was one of these great,
this is a fun table runner. And if you have a loved one who wore a lot
of ties, take a look at this. This is really fun. This is also a fun father’s day project. If you want to, you know, pull in your loved
one’s ties. My husband has a bunch of ties so I thought
this would be a fun thing to do. So basically what I did on this was I cut
a piece from my shirt. And the piece is, the piece was seven by,
how big is this? By 14. Seven by 14. Then I took a tie and I have some ties here. And I’ll show you how I did this. So here’s a little tie. And this is all, you know, this is one of
those things where you can make it any size you want. Let me go ahead and take this little sleeve
right here. And I’m going to cut a seven by 14 inch
piece out of here. Just so you can see how I’m, how I’m cutting
this. I’m going to straighten this up right here
where I know I have a nice big area and take off that little piece. And I’m going to come over here and I’m
going to cut this piece here. Now what I’m doing right now is I’m just
cutting off this part so that I can now lay this nice and flat. When you cut up a shirt, what’s interesting,
you know in our minds, it’s like, it’s a shirt but really when you open it up like
this it’s just fabric. So I’m going to straighten off this edge
here. And of course when you do it you’re going
to want to get as much use out of it as possible. So I’m going to straighten this. This gives me a flat edge to go on. And I’m going to come over and I’m going
to count. And again this is up to you. However wide you want it you can do it that
way. So I’m going to count, one, two, three,
four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. We’re going to come over 15. And then I’m going to cut this down to seven. So I’m going to get one straight edge on
here. And I’ve got to come in a little bit to
get a straight edge. And then I’m going to count over seven. And that’s going to give me my piece. And see here’s this one right here. It’s the same fabric. And I’m going to give this a little bit
of a press so it lays nice and flat. Let me move this out of the way so you can
see this. And then I’m going to decide how long I
want my tie. Now I cut them all the same, once I decided
that length, I cut them all the same. And so I’m going to lay this on here like
this. And I’m just going to cut it right here. And just cut that off like that. Then what I did is I took some of this easy
seam, this fusible. This is such a great little product. And it makes it stick on. So I’m going to put this fusible on either
side like this and some right down here on the tip, here and here. Then you have to iron it to make sure that
it sticks on there. And so I’m just going to really easily come
across here and give that a press. And then we’re going to peel away this paper
like that. And it should leave your little sticky seam. Mine is lifting so I must have peeled it too
fast. That’s alright. I’ll just kind of arrange it on there because
I’m going to iron it to stick down anyway. It keeps sticking to my fingers. See if I can get that off. There we go. That’s one of those comedy of errors, isn’t
it? Alright let me pull this one off on this side. Hopefully this one will adhere. I probably didn’t let it cool long enough. There we go. See that one is nice on there. Let me get this little end right here. And then we’re going to take off this little
points right here. And then this one over here. There we go. Alright so now I’m going to place my tie
on here. I’m going to keep the edge of the tie right
here so it will be enclosed in the seam. Center it up. Make sure it’s nice and centered. And then I’m going to go over to the ironing
board and I’m going to press it so that that little sticky strip now glues it on there. And then I like to flip it over because the
tie is awfully thick and this side will hit the glue much faster. . Now what I did on these ties, what I’m going
to do on here is just stitch right along the edge, just a tiny, a tiny little stitch right
along the edge and very close to the edge. There we go. And I’m going to just put this. And when I do an edge stitch, what I do is
I make sure my presser foot is like right in the middle of that toe. It’s lined up right along the side. So I’m just going to go down here along
this side. And because it’s all adhesed into place,
it’s not moving anywhere. Come around the side and come up this side. There we go. And you can see right on here that stitch
line barely shows as I’m stitching along that edge. And of course I would have, you know, I would
have probably used a darker thread like a maroon thread so that it would really hide
in there. Then you’re just going to make as many of
these as you want long. And you’re just going to rotate them back
and forth as you put them together. Here let me move this one up here so you can
see it better. So see how this one goes this way. The next one goes this way. The next one goes this way. There’s not even a border on here. We just laid them all out like that and put
them together. And then we just machine quilted over the
top of it. You can see our little, our little swirly
designs on here. And it machine quilts the whole thing. So these are just a couple of ideas for you
to do. Quick and easy ideas to make some memory clothing. If it is a female in your family who has gone,
I mean this works with her clothing as well. It’s just going to be a more feminine look
to it. And just as easy. Now if you’re working with anything with
knits, any type of knit, you want to stabilize that first. So you’re going to iron that knit onto a
stabilizer then it also become just like fabric. But if you’re dealing cotton shirts and
things like that, just a piece of cake. Just cut out the size you want and put them
together to make the projects. And remember that once you make a square any
of the other projects that we’ve done with squares will work just as well for making
memory quilts out of your loved ones clothing. So we hope you enjoyed this tutorial on how
to make projects from your loved one’s clothes and Memory Quilts from the MSQC.
