Make a Memory Quilt for Free from Your Old Clothes!

I made a goal in the wintertime to make a quilt for our family that we could use for picnics and other outings- something that I would feel fine about throwing on the ground and getting dirty   So throughout the winter, I collected clothes that my youngest had grown out of or that had gotten a little worn out or stained.  I am saving my favorite outfits for a “baby clothes quilt” (Have you seen those? They’re adorable!), but for this project, I wanted the old/stained/worn out clothes (the ones the thrift stores don’t even want)

When I finally felt I had enough clothes (including a pair of plaid PJ bottoms of mine that shrunk and an old crib sheet), I got to work cutting out 6×6″ squares of fabric.  Eventually, I had enough squares to make a quilt that was 12 by 12 squares.

Below you can see a picture of the squares laid out on the floor, and I’ve added a few photos showing my oldest wearing the shirts that some of the squares are made from (my youngest also wore them, so they’ve been through a lot).

Once I figured out how I wanted to organize my squares, I sewed the squares into rows and then sewed the rows together until I had the front of the quilt done.

Then I called my mom before making a trip to the fabric store for the back piece and filling and was so happy to find a way to do that for free, too!

She had this old white blanket that I could use for the filling:

And a pink fitted sheet that we cut the elastic off of to use for the back of the quilt:

I sewed the three layers of the quilt together so that they would be inside out (but left a bit un-sewed so that I could flip it right side out).  After flipping it, I hand stitched the hole closed.  Then top stitched around the outside of the quilt:

The next step was to “stitch in the ditch” by machine.  First I pinned all of the squares because I wanted to make sure I didn’t end up with any bunched up bits of fabric in the middle of the quilt.

My 3 year old was an excellent helper for this stage- passing me safety pins

I was so happy when I got it finished!  And what a bonus that it cost me nothing but time and the cost of thread!   It is NOT a perfect quilt- you could find a bunch of mistakes in it.  You can already see grass stains on it, and I think that’s PERFECT for what I want to use it for!  I love that I don’t have to worry about it if it gets dirty, and that I know I can throw it in the wash as often as needed.  I also love that it’s full of memories because I can just see my little girls in the clothes that the fabric came from!

I can’t wait to get some use out of it this summer!

If you enjoyed this post, you should hop over to my blog & see what other interesting sewing projects I’ve tried

Heather

Heather is a Canadian mother of 2 girls. She has a Liberal Arts degree and loves photography. She is always looking for ways to make fun memories with her girls and share them them online through HowDoesShe and her blog, Raising Memories.

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