Rocking some serious well thought gifts: Tshirt Blanket #3 and Memory Pillows

Day 131

Finished up another Tshirt blanket and this one is double sided with shirt squares which makes it awkward when sewing the whole thing together. My goal is to one day have a quilting machine so I can do some really cool designs but for now I work with what I got....

This particular blanket was for a local youth pastor and it included some really neat blocks like from where he went to seminary and one with children's signatures all over it that I had to cut into 4 squares to get most of them onto the block.

This is the back side, not much different but since there were so many shirts it worked to cover both sides to include as many memories as possible! In between is a simple queen sized flat sheet to add strength and weight to the blanket since the knit of the shirts can get stretchy and pull at the stitches.

In order to sew these together I picked a simple cross design and had I to do it over again I would have shifted the design so it was tilted corner to corner over the squares instead I just followed along the square design in the center of the blanket. But live, learn and be creative and grow eh?! I am pretty happy with this because it was the first one I had done with shirts on both sides.

And apparently I forgot to take pictures of the fleece backs and simple grid designs on the first two blankets but I will take pictures of the next one I have which should be within the week I promise! Basically the blankets with the plain backs are simple grids sewn in straight lines vertically and horizontally, starting from the middle and working out.

And here are some Tshirt memory pillows I just completed that will be Christmas gifts for family members of the beloved Mother, Wife and Grandmother who passed on. Her family could not bear to part with her clothes and had been storing them until they found me! I can just see the tears flowing as these are opened on Christmas morning surrounded by all those happy memories.

The request for each pillow was that they had to include a Harley-Davidson shirt and a Winnie the Pooh. She also wore a lot of button downs so I made sure to include squares of those as well.

I really, really love the ways these all turned out different but unique. The ones made from the button down shirts are my favorites, so crisp!

These are 12"x16" pillows covered in 4" squares. Can't wait to do more of these they were a lot of fun and so simple to create.