Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Making Quilts from Old Clothing

Most of the fabric that I make quilts with comes from old clothes that were going to be thrown away. I do buy new fabric when I am doing sewing for other people. All of the clothing that I can not wear or friends and family members do not want, I take the clothes and use them for making quilts and other projects.

I found this blog, http://quiltville.blogspot.com/ . The lady who has this blog makes her quilts out of old clothes. She has made some really neat quilts. She also wrote a quilt book called Scraps & Shirttails. You can preview her book here -
http://quiltville.com/scrapsandshirttailspreview.shtml .

I love to sewing and making quilts! I save all of the 100% cotton clothes for quilt making and all the flannel shirts and blue jeans I save to use in raggedy quilts and tied quilts.

Here are some pictures of one of my projects that is in the making now. It is all made from cotton clothing and the white center was made from an old sheet.
This is a quilt I am making with my mom, my sister, and my granny.





This is a Raggedy Quilt that I made with Mom, Sister, and Granny.
Raggedy quilts are made with a blue jean top and the back of the quilt can be made with homespun, flannel, or cotton. The quilt that I made in the picture is backed with cotton. A Raggedy Quilt is not quilted, I guess it is more of a blanket than a quilt. A Raggedy Quilt is sewn so all of the seams show in the top of the quilt. When a Raggedy quilt is all sewn together, all of the seams are clipped, then the quilt is washed ,dried, and the top of the quilt has the appearance of a pair of raggedy, frayed blue jeans.
The quilt in the picture is over six years old and has been used a lot.


-Front of Raggedy Quilt-
-Back of Raggedy Quilt-

To make a quilt top, all that is needed is a pattern, some material, a needle, and thread, you don't even need a sewing machine to make a quilt. Thin pieces of cardboard like cereal boxes, spaghetti boxes, back of old note-books work best for making a pattern.
Quilts made with small pieces, like the Double Wedding Ring quilt I have shown above, are wonderful to take along wherever I go, especially when I go somewhere where I have to wait, like when I go to the doctor, the dentist, etc..... I can get a lot of sewing done while I am sitting and waiting, actually, it seems like I can get a quilt done much faster sewing by hand than I can while sitting at the sewing machine. When I am sewing a quilt by hand, I can work on it anytime, anywhere.
I keep all of the pieces to each quilt in their own container so I don't get them mixed up with other projects I am working on. I keep my projects in tins, baskets, purses, etc....
Belle

11 comments:

Small City Scenes said...

Those quilts are just beautiful. MB

Rabbithorns said...

They're beautiful! I'm glad you mention making the pattern pieces from cardboard from the kitchen. I thought I was being cheap but I like the homespun ones. And they're colorful on one side!

electricdunce said...

Wonderful quilts, and such a good idea to use up perfectly good cloth. When my ex husband died, seven years ago I saved all his cotton shirts to make quilts for our two kids. We were divorced, but his fiance thought it was a great idea. I will probably make her a quilt too.

Karin

Anonymous said...

My mom used to save old clothes and when she had time she cut them into quilt pieces. She made a lot of quilts over the years and all of my 5 kids have them. When she died she had several bags of quilt pieces cut and my mother in law used them to make a large quilt but the fabric was so old it was almost rotton. So the quilt can never be washed.

I don't think many people do this nowadays but when I was growing up it was common. I like your work and the price of blue jeans these days would make a quilt expensive if made from them.

My sister and husband used to make quilts and took them south and sold them to stores between Ohio and Texas where they used the money for a vacation.

Unknown said...

Lovely quilts.
Thank you for entering my tatting giveaway for OWOH. Good luck to you. I hope you do fulfill your desire to learn to tat.

Debra said...

Those quilts look like the ones my Grandma made - just precious.

I still need to learn to quilt - I have some old clothes of my moms (I lost her 3 years ago) that I would love to make into a little quilt or something for my daughter. She never knew her Grandma. One day I'll learn OR pay someone to do it.

apple blossom said...

I just love quilts. Thanks for sharing.

Abi

Vanessa Rogers said...

I love this idea, and I have been thinking of doing this as well, but when I took out all of the material, I didn't have much cotton, they were all different fabrics. I am not experienced in the art of sewing, but my family is, however, I wanted to make a more modern artsy quilt, but I didn't really know where to start. I will take a look at that woman's blog. Thanks for sharing.

Unknown said...

Your quilts are lovely! Great idea to recycle the clothes that way. I am going to have to keep this in mind. Thanks for posting this. :)

RecycleCindy said...

I love this idea of making a quilt from recycled materials. I want to do a quilt top of denim squares. Thanks for sharing your cool ideas.

Anonymous said...

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