An exciting project!

I've mentioned in recent posts that several custom orders have materialized in recent weeks.

There's one that's particularly exciting to me:  a striped shirt quilt!

This was generated by a colleague of my husband.  Both the husband and wife work at my husband's office. The wife wanted to give her husband something really special for his retirement, which is coming up next fall. She thought a quilt made out of his work shirts would be a great way to mark the occasion.

I couldn't be more thrilled to do this project.  I've always wanted to do something like this, but it was one of those projects that was going to have to find me.  And now it has.

A big bag of shirts has arrived.

There are 3 plaids.

4 stripes.

7 solids.













I was considering doing something kind of piece-y, but the more I think about it, I think a simple one patch might be the way to go on this.
I was particularly inspired today by Rita's post at Red Pepper Quilts.  She's working on a striped project also, this one out of vintage linens.

photo courtesy of Red Pepper Quilts

Of course, that's a much snazzier color palette than what I have to work with.  But I'm intrigued with the idea of just manipulating squares to get a pattern, and letting the stripes do the work, so to speak. 

There are also a lot of ideas on Pinterest, which has it's own Men's shirts page.  And Quilt Inspiration had a big feature on reclaimed clothing quilts, with lots of great pictures (click here).