College Memory Quilt: Southern Virginia University

I'm very proud of how this quilt came out for several reasons:

1. I did not have many shirts to work with! Typically for my medium (60x70) size quilts, I prefer having around 20-25 shirts to work with so I will have plenty of material for the design. This client only had about 11 shirts from their college years that were in good enough condition to be used for the quilt. I had to be very careful when designing the layout, cutting the graphics, and cutting remaining fabric scraps (to do it in a way that would maximize the fabric I had to use). I had needed all the shirt backs and some pieces of the sleeves to make the design large enough.

2. The shirts provided were a rather limited color palette that all worked together, and then one bright red shirt that contrasted sharply. I needed to incorporate the single red shirt in order to achieve the size of quilt the client desired. I feel really pleased with how I was able to integrate the bright red into the overall pattern of the quilt as a whole.

3. Incorporating unique elements of the shirts into the quilt design. This applique heart was from the sleeve of one of the shirts that was used. After I finished cutting out the main designs from the shirt fronts and backs, I was looking over the pile of scraps for anything else of interest that could be added to the quilt. I noticed one of the tie-dye shirt sleeves had a design that kind of looked like a heart! I cut the sleeve in a way to make the heart shape even more obvious and then appliqued it onto a piece of the back of a white shirt I was already planning to use to fill an empty space in my quilt design.