One of the questions I was asked recently was whether patchwork and quilting was expensive. As with everything we do, it’s up to us. It can be very expensive but, on the other hand, it doesn’t have to be. Sometimes we lose sight of the fact that quilts used to be made up of fabric taken from garments beyond repair. The tiny bits of useful fabric were pieced together to form quilts to keep the family warm. It was out of necessity, they didn’t have the luxury of buying new fabric for the specific purpose of cutting up and sewing together to form a quilt.
I find it a very satisfying challenge to recycle fabrics to make quilts and I love the connection between us in the modern day and our female ancestors, making things for their families. I try to pass on this delight to other so in December, my club members made cushions using fabric recycled from shirts. At the same time, I made a quilt as a bonus project. Both the cushion and quilt were made for less than £10.
This is how I did it.
We have some wonderful charity shops here in Sheffield. Very often, we can find new or as new garments for a reasonable price. In fact, one sell shirts for £1. Shirts have a tremendous amount of fabric in them, especially the bigger sizes, so it’s a cheap way to get lots of fabric. I had five colour coordinated shirts that I used for this project.
The cushion was made from a sleeve from each of the shirts, plus a shirt front for the back. There was plenty left over, so, with the remaining sleeves, I formed enough strips to sew a quilt top. The backs of the shirts were pieced to form the back, and then one front piece from each shirt formed the binding. From the five shirts, I have one front piece from four of the shirts leftover. As wadding was pieced from scraps, all I added that was new was the cushion pad.
If you want to give quilting a go, and are not sure about investing lots of money into it, then why not try recycling older fabric. If you have any questions or need any help, please ask and, of course, we’d love to see your photos.
Thanks for the article Jane, I love your shirt cushion and quilt, I have a few shirts in my stash and this may help me find my lost sewing mojo.
My first ever quilt was a rag quilt made with used denim jeans on the front and sweatshirts on the back using QAYG squares no wadding needed. My 6th quilt was made using the leftover strips from the same Jeans, and my leftover scraps of wadding sewn together, and backing was a piece of recycled flannel sheet.
Both are well loved by recipients.
With so much waste in the world we should all endeavour to return to reusing and make a few recycled fabric quilts.
Karen, that’s lovely. I did a denim throw for one of my boys, it was made from all the jeans they’d finally grown out of or were too worn to wear. It took years to collect all the pieces and they moaned every time I pinched a pair of jeans, but it is well loved and used by them and all their friends. If you get your sewing mojo back, please do share your photos