I thought I'd share with you the steps to encourage you to make your own memory quilt for your child. I've broken it down into simple steps, and a basic level of sewing is required. Remember if you have any questions please email me at Piptextiles@iinet.net.au as happy to help!
Step One:
Gather all the clothes, wash first. Depending on how many clothes you have will depend on the size of quilt. Here are the quilt measurements I go by
Single: 140 x 210cm
Double: 180 x 210
I cut the clothes up into squares measuring 17cm x 17cm. You will need at least 70 squares. Remember you can use the back of the clothes and you can improvise with other fabric, say a polka dot or a plain colour to make up the amount of squares. Swaddles/baby blankets are also good to use.
It's important you stabilize the back of the clothes. As all the fabric is different types, mostly jersey with a lot of stretch, it will make the quilt very hard to keep square/straight. Even using the methods I am about to tell you it most probably will still be a little uneven or pucker. But hey! this is a handmade quilt and nothing is perfect in this World, it will look good though ... promise.
So I have used two methods in the past. Plain white fabric and sewn (usually diagonally) the baby cloth square to the white fabric or you can use a light weight iron on interfacing.
Step Two:
Lay out your squares to make sure you don't have the same fabric next too each other and see what size you can make. As you can see from the above photo I have left room for the boarder to go in and show you how it will look.
Hints: if you want to make your quilt bigger and you don't have enough squares & don't want to add extra fabric squares you can either make the boarder fabric wider; I use 5cm usually (7cm cut) and/or you can make the outside boarder (top & bottom) bigger in contrasting fabric or just white.
Step Three:
Cutting up your boarder fabric. This is the fabric to go around the square blocks. If you want little squares to go in between the blocks you will need to also cut these now too; cut 7cm x 7cm and they will sew as 5cm squares.
Cut the longitudinal strips as a whole ie, quilt is 210cm long - cut 210cm length. x 7cm wide.
Horizontal strips need to be the width of the square, so 17cm x 7cm. these will be sewn first onto the baby clothes square - at the bottom of each square.
Well that's it for now - will get back to you with Steps 4 onwards next time. Remember you can contact me to ask questions - positive feedback is appreciated :)