T-Shirt Rag Quilts: A Great Way to Bring Together Years of Memories

About any cloth item can be made into a memory quilt - shirts from favorite vacations, sport teams, fraternity or sororities, baby blankets, onesies, kids clothing, men's dress shirts, grandma's favorite dress and more. Don't just shove them away in a closet or the basement in a plastic bag where no one can see them and appreciate them in a new form. They be can re-purposed into a useful and precious quilt that can be giving for lots of different occasions like graduation, new baby, wedding gifts, anniversary gift, Christmas, birthday and more.

I have been truly blessed to be asked to create amazing quilts and pillows for people who have saved these special shirts for years so that they could be collectively be stitched together for their loved ones.  Let me introduce you to a few of them.

This "Bradley" quilt was made for a high school graduate who grew up loving Bradley University and then herself choose to go there for college.  I love how this quilt brought lots of great memories of this young lady's childhood with her to make even more amazing ones as she started out her life on her own.  She had a bit of "home" with her at school.

I also got to add a special rectangle with her name embroidered on it to make it extra special.

The "Cheer Time" quilt was so fun to make because it was my first dad who brought me these lovely shirts and jacket to bring together as a lovely gift for his daughter.  I loved seeing how excited he was to have all of her years in dance and cheering brought together.  I'm sure he could envision every practice he brought her to and every competition he was there to watch.

Quilts bring together all sorts of someone's interests and just fun times throughout their lives.  One of the things I love about making these quilts is the creative challenge to take a big pile of shirts and putting together a piece that looks great but also honors all the memories someone has had over so many years.

My quilts can be made in a variety of ways. I can use your shirts to make the front and the back and use soft flannel in between the squares to give it a nice comforting weight and softness. This is especially great when you are using shirts that have a fun front and a name and/or number on the back.

I can also use just the front of the shirts and use a super soft and warm fleece material on the back which makes it extra nice to cozy up with. The quilt will be made rag style, meaning that the seams will be sewn out then the edges clipped and frayed for a fun framed 3-D effect. The flannel or fleece used in the squares will show through to give a fun accent that brings the whole quilt together nicely.

Standard quilt blocks are approximately 13 inches unfinished and 12 inches finished. So a quilt that is 4 squares by 5 squares so approximately 48 x 60 " which is a great throw blanket.  But I can also make other sized squares to accommodate larger or smaller clothing items like baby onesies and more.   If you are interesting in having me create a t-shirt memory quilt for you please feel free to contact me at corrina.dea@theunlimitedstitch.com or you can order one through my Etsy shop at this custom listing:  https://www.etsy.com/listing/269612457/custom-t-shirt-rag-quilt-memory-tee?ref=shop_home_active_15 .