A Quilt Project From the Heart
This quilt project has been so long in the making. So, so long but also so, so worth it.
Let me tell you the story of how this quilt project came to be…
After my grandmother passed, the family needed to clean out her house. It was a massive undertaking that took months & several people to get it fully done. One of the bigger projects at my grandparent’s house was my grandmother’s clothes. She had a TON of clothes.
I’m not exaggerating when I say that my grandmother had three—yes, 3—closets worth of clothes.
THREE closets FULL of clothes. I can’t even imagine, personally, but Grandma did.
My grandpa only got 1 little section, poor guy. (He was an excellent dresser so clearly the small closet didn’t affect him. Anyway…)
When she passed, we were trying to think of the best way to handle all of the clothes. Some have sentimental value, some don’t (at least for me. Hello, 2nd youngest grandchild here!). Macy had the great idea to make a quilt out of all of her clothes.
One Saturday in September, some of the ladies of the family gathered at Grandma’s to start going through her closets. My other grandmother taught me how to sew years ago & we knew that she’d know which pieces of clothing could be used in the quilt so she joined us over there & we got to work. It took a few hours plus a Chick-Fil-A lunch break but we got it done; all three closets were cleaned out.
We ended up with 90 pieces of clothing that would work for the quilt. It took up 2 55-gallon tubs. I’m not kidding.
What No One Tells You…
Looking back, going through the clothes was the easiest part. What no one tells you about making a quilt is that you have to cut all of the clothes apart. It’s a lot of work! This definitely took the longest for me. It wasn’t always comfortable & I was constantly adjusting my system to make it more efficient. After a few days, I started to find a good groove and had no problem doing a lot of cutting. Thankfully, I didn’t cut all 90 pieces by myself. My aunt took a portion of the clothes & cut some too.
We have a lot of quilts at my house so we knew pretty early one which one we wanted to mimic for this quilt. It’s one that my great aunt made years and years ago and it’s comprised of rows of squares that alternate horizontally & vertically. The squares are made up of four pieces of fabric which equals a lot of cutting when there are 90 pieces of clothing.
It took me almost three weeks to get everything cut down to right size for the quilt.
Don’t feel bad for me. I got to watch Hallmark movies & re-runs of some of my favorite shows and it was a break at the end of the day for me to go to the basement by myself & cut. I actually enjoyed it! (I’m weird, I know.)
Piecing the Quilt Together
It was so fun getting to see this quilt come together. My mom really has an eye for design so I enlisted her help in laying the quilt out & piecing it together. Zoe really wanted to be helpful but she would keep running on the pieces we had laid on the floor she kept getting in trouble. She finally just laid down next to it.
My Favorite Piece
Zoe’s actually laying near one of my favorite pieces of the quilt. The leopard print shirt has a story behind it. One day, after my grandfather passed, I went shopping with my grandmother & saw this shirt that I thought would look really good on her. She ends up buying it and then when talking to my mom later that afternoon she says that she just bought it because I liked it. WHAT?! To make that even funnier, she wore the shirt all the time! You don’t know how many times I would pick her up to go grocery shopping or to get her hair done and she’d be wearing that shirt. So, I think she liked the shirt just as much as I did. 🙂 I made sure to put that leopard print all over the quilt. It’s one of the most special pieces to me.
Between laying out all of our fabric options & laying out the actual quilt, we barely had room to walk downstairs. We were leaping over things just to maneuver our way around.
We got it all laid out in one day. Don’t get me wrong, it took us all day but we got it done in one day. We were very proud of ourselves for that. I didn’t realize going into it but piecing it together takes a lot of work especially when you have a lot of colors and patterns that you’re trying to put into one quilt. You want to make sure it flows & looks good to the eye. My mom is really good at that so thank goodness for her!
I definitely wasn’t going to start sewing that same day so we very carefully “put up” the quilt so I could sew another day. I made sure to take a picture of the whole quilt laid out so I could refer back to it the whole time I sewed to make sure I put it together the way we had it laid out.
Sewing The Quilt Together
Cutting was…fun but what was even more fun was finally getting to sew. I’ve been sewing since I was little but it’s been a long time since I’ve pulled my sewing machine out of the closet & actually did some sewing. I was curious to see if it was like riding a bike.
My mom had the great idea to move some of the furniture in the basement so that way I could set up my sewing machine on a card table & leave it up for as long as I wanted so that way I didn’t have to rush to sew the entire quilt. This was a great idea & I really think it helped make it more enjoyable because I could just chill, take my time, and enjoy the process.
This was probably the most enjoyable part of the entire quilt project. It became meditative. It was just me in the basement, my sewing machine, the clothes, and whatever I wanted to watch on TV. I could zone out, have some alone time, and sew. It truly became something that I looked forward to and relished. This quilt wasn’t the only project I was working on so to be able to take a break from those & work peacefully in the basement was really nice.
How long did it take to sew?
I don’t know how many days it took me to sew the entire thing together: pieces of fabric to squares, squares to rows, and sewing the rows together. But I do know that I watched a LOT of TV. More than I should probably admit to but I prefer to keep it real so, I did a lot of TV watching. Based on what I watched, I’d say that sewing took me 25-30 hours. It was a little more than a part-time job but I really enjoyed it. My main concern is that those shows that I watched were Netflix series and I have no idea what I’m gonna do or how I will find the time to watch all of them when a new season comes out & I don’t have a quilt to sew. Hahaha #firstworldproblems
The quilt is completely sewn together. It feels very surreal because this quilt project has taken months on & off.
You thought this post was over didn’t you? Well, not quite….
Honesty Hour:
In the spirit of keeping it 100% real with you, I had to sew this quilt twice. I made the big mistake of washing the top (that’s what this part of the quilt is called) & I shouldn’t have. You usually don’t wash it so heed my warning: don’t wash it! If anything, wash your fabric individually beforehand if you want to. But not after you sew it.
Some spots had come undone in the washing machine & some of the edge pieces became a little frayed because of the raw edges. I tried to just sew the spots back together but there was some pulling & puckering. I didn’t like that so I made the decision to just re-sew (almost) the entire quilt, as in use a seam ripper to take out all of the stitches. Not the entire quilt but any part that had a hole in the seam or looked like it could give at any minute.
I re-sewed over the course of 11 days but it finally got done! Some squares had to be completely taken apart, some only had 2 pieces that needed to be re-done, and some had none (those were my favorites :)). I also had to just straight up replace some of the pieces because they frayed so much in the washer. They were already small so trimming them to remove the fray would’ve made them so tiny you wouldn’t have been able to notice they were there. Very few actually had to be replaced so that was good. 🙂
Lesson learned, my friends, lesson learned.
Here’s What I Learned Here:
Have a wide margin between your seam & the edge of your fabric. I didn’t because I didn’t want to lose too much of the fabric & have really tiny pieces. My bad. When I went back to re-sew it, I used a bigger margin, maybe a generous ½” or so and I think that made the stitches sturdier.
Since I was using a bigger margin when sewing the squares back together and would be doing the same when I sewed the squares to make a row and then to sew the rows together, we decided to add another row.
This was a great decision because the quilt ended up still being roughly the same size as it was before. But finally, finally, after another 4 days of sewing, the quilt was actually DONE!
Again, don’t feel bad for me. I loved being able to go downstairs to my space, watch my shows, & just completely zone out & work on the quilt. At certain points, it was very calming (at certain points it was also a little stressful but that’s just the nature of the beast) & it was something that I really looked forward to doing. I loved it so much that I’m actually going to make another for my cousin! 🙂
The Math Up to Now:
For all of the sewing I did (both times), I spent roughly 14 days total.
How long has the project been going on? I started cutting about mid-way through January and finally finished it mid-way through August. I obviously didn’t work on this every day for 8 months. There were a few weeks that I took off here & there between all the milestones & other projects I had but my point is that it’s been a long time in the making!
You’re Done Sewing, Now What?
We headed to Hobby Lobby to get the batting & backing. At first, we were looking for a blue fabric because the quilt has a lot of blue in it but none of it was really working for me. There’s so much color and pattern in the quilt that we wanted something to complement it but not distract from it. Enter gold polka dot fabric. My mom just happened to spot it & it was perfect! Perfect!
I can sew but I can’t quilt so we dropped off all of the materials with a local lady who could quilt it. We finally got it back & I am in love with it.
Doesn’t it look so good?!
Ta-Da!
We really tried to incorporate as much of Grandma’s clothes as we could to really bring the whole idea of a quilt made out of Grandma’s clothes home. We wanted it to truly describe her. I can point to the iconic Grandma pieces on that quilt & I feel like the quilt really encapsulates her wardrobe & her life as she wore these clothes.
I know this quilt is going to be something that we cherish forever. It’s so special & I am so glad that I got the opportunity to cut the fabric and sew it all together.
Let me know below: have you ever made a quilt out of someone’s clothes? How did the process go for you?! Has one ever been gifted to you? Do you want to make one? If you have any questions, comment below & I’ll answer them as best as I can.
Love,
Interested in more of the DIY projects I’ve done? Here ya go!
