Another BIG project wrapped

The warm side

Back when our daughter was a pre-schooler, we arrived at a compromise: if the clothes she outgrew still had good life left in them, we would make sure they went to a new home. The clothes she outgrew that were rather tatty, however, would not be kept in perpetuity. But, I would up-cycle the textiles and make her a quilt on day. Whether she remembered this pledge or not, she did eventually stop growing, and I made good on my promise.

Starting the summer before her senior year of high school, I sorted everything, cutting the t-shirts, pajamas & old leggings into useable rectangles and started to think about a pattern. Somewhere on the web I found a freeform quilt idea that I adapted. First I had to stabilize everything with a lightweight

Pieced strips

woven interfacing, and then using a rotary cutter made a whole lot of strips of varying widths. There are about 1200-1300 individual pieces! I sorted the fabrics into warm & cool and spent that fall making the beveled strips- no measuring...I just went for it. That

December, I had all 26 strips made, but needed to do a little R&D to figure out how to join them. I would lose too much width by simply seaming them together.

I knew I wanted some kind of dark rail, so I bagged out long tubes of black cotton that I could then fold and sculpt to fill in any funky gaps. I zig-zagged the rails on, connecting 13 strips on a warm side and the other 13 on the cool side.

Close up of bagged out "rail" folded to join two strips into a chevron.

This past summer, I was able lay everything out and sandwich some thin batting in between, pinned the layers together and tried to get the whole thing

Backside of the warm side, seam allowance trimmed away

as square as possible. Once the weather cooled down, I spent this past fall hand quilting the layers together with heavy weight cream thread in a simple running stitch since it would be visible from both sides. I tried using a hoop but it was too heavy, so I just stretched the sections I was working on between my knees. I set a goal to stitch 3 segments a day (13 segments per row, about 40 rows of stitching total). I finished quilting at Thanksgiving, and as I waited for final projects to get turned in, I plugged holes, and bound the edges. Yesterday I added a few appliqués I saved from her shirts, and washed & dried the whole thing this morning. Just in time for the holidays even if I missed her high school graduation by a semester!

A little key-stoning from taking a photo- it actually has remarkably square corners!