Spring is finally here and that means there may be a graduation celebration around the corner. If you want create a special gift and keepsake for your graduate, consider a t-shirt or sweatshirt quilt. This is a special gift for any occasion – a birthday, Christmas, graduation, etc. — but, at this time of the year, I thought thought this would be a great idea for a special graduate. I made a quilt for each of my kids and both have really appreciated having memories of their high school/college days wrapped in a keepsake quilt.
The quilt featured in this post is the quilt that I made for my daughter, Kelly. She had a collection of sweatshirts from high school and college stored in a box that she was keeping for memory-sake. There were just a few but enough to make a small, lap quilt. I have basic sewing skills but really tend to stick with simple projects where just simple straight seams are required. So, there are YouTube videos to refer to with some great instruction on the mechanics behind quilt assembly. What I can share with you are some learnings from making Kevin’s quilt that made piecing this quilt much easier.
PIECE PATTERNS
The beauty of the making your own quilt is that you can customize it in anyway you want. That said, for a sewer with basic skills, I needed to look for the simplest way to approach this and for me this included a single pattern for the quilt pieces. I made a single pattern and each piece was the same size. In some instances I needed to sew two pieces together to make the size of a single quilt block.
STABILIZING THE PIECES
I’ve seen these quilts with and without interfacing on the backs of the quilt pieces and in my experience, stabilizing the t-shirts makes piecing the quilt together much easier. Not only does the interfacing prevent the t-shirts from stretching while sewing, the stabilized fabric adds body to the quilt without being stiff. (I used a lightweight interfacing.)
SASHING
I could have assembled the quilt without sashing, but the sashing nicely frames each quilt piece and it was not difficult to include.
QUILTING
These quilts can be made without actual “quilting”. However, I really like the look of the stitching and the traditional finish. For this quilt, I chose this pattern below for the quilting. I have a friend who has the large quilting machine and I hired her to do the stitching. This is not inexpensive but worth the investment. And, I saved more than half of the cost of making the quilt by piecing it together.
BINDING
Since my quilt design is basic, I added interest not only through the sashing and quilting pattern, but also through the fabric choice for the binding. I selected something with a pattern and color that would nicely frame the entire quilt.
This second quilt went so much faster than the first one. And, it really was not difficult to piece the quilt together. If you are thinking of doing this as a graduation gift, give yourself some time to get it done!
Happy sewing!
