As I'm sure most of you do, we have a serious hoard of old clothes that haven't ventured out the wardrobe for months, if not years, but haven't quite made it to the charity shop yet!
I'm also sure most of you can empathise with how difficult it is to get rid of certain clothes sometimes......'it might come back into fashion again', 'I've not worn it enough times', 'its still in half decent condition', or the most common one for me is 'I just love it and can't bring myself to part ways just yet'.
In the case of these shirts below...they had managed to make it out of the wardrobe but unfortunately not into the bin - despite worn out holes, being ripped and generally a bit tatty. Sick fed up with an untidy pile of old clothes in the spare bedroom, I decided to do something else with the shirts instead.
Enter the latest issue of Mollie Makes and the gorgeous quilt project by Nikki Trench from her new book 'a passion for quilting'. The idea behind the project is to gather bits and pieces of fabric you already have or something that has a special meaning, so using the shirts seemed perfect.
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| As seen in Februarys' issue of Mollie Makes, the patchwork quilt project by Nikki Trench |
So off I got to work cutting out my squares. I decided to make slightly smaller squares than suggested as it was easier to just cut round the grid ruler that I had already. If you've never used a rotary cutter before your missing out! Nothing gives super straight sharp lines like it! Its one of those really satisfying cuts!
I used 6 shirts in total and ended up with almost 160 squares!
Laying it all out become a bit complicated. I don't have a surface big enough in my house so had to use as much of the bed as I could then spill it onto the floor.
Next was stitching all those squares together. It was a bit of a slog but I got a system going and managed to get my time to stitch a strip down to about 7 minutes. It all got a bit competitive by the time I reached the 14 strip!
And here is my finished quilt....
......with pockets incorporated.
I decided to use a navy blue soft and cosy brushed cotton for the back to contrast with the light colours of the shirts. I used white quilting thread to make the squares stand out more on the back too.
