Tee-Shirt Quilts

You have or used to have dozens of them. I’m talking about tee-shirts.  Whether you are male or female, you owned that ribbed neck tee-shirt that was too tight or  full of holes. Maybe the length of the shirt wasn’t long enough or invariably, a big blob of SOMETHING ruined your favorite shirt, but you wore it anyway.  I cannot count the number of tee-shirts I have either worn or run through the needle of my sewing machine.

Can't you just see me in this now?

I used to have a t-shirt for every play I worked on at The Players-by-the-Sea Community Theatre. The other collection of shirts I had came from Weight Watchers or a sales campaign that AT&T was promoting. I rarely bought a shirt at a concert, but did have one with those big Mick Jagger lips from a Rolling Stones concert at the Gator bowl. I always felt so conspicuous when I wore that shirt. I ended up giving it away to another Stones fan I worked with.  When I was a younger 36-28-38 I loved and wore my tee-shirts to bed, to work and especially to the beach over my bikini (yes, I wore and made them for myself too). My tee-shirts showed off my slim arms, sometimes made a statement and I kept every one of them until they rotted off the metal hangers they hung on.
  

Neil's Harley Davidson Shirt Collection

My own personal all-time favorite tee-shirt was a pink shirt with a yellow stripe down the back from the Player’s production of Kurt Vonnegut’s play “Happy Birthday, Wanda June”.  I worked on the lights and sound from the balcony control room on that play and each time I wore that shirt, I was reminded of that romantic, eye-opening experience. It was the tee-shirt I held on to the longest and the hardest to let go.  I moved them from apartment to apartment and washed my car with them when they had had it. They were most handy as dust rags, not that I would really know about that.  I’ve tie-dyed, designed my own, silk screened, sold them, handed them out to the masses and now I cut them up and make quilts out of them for those moms and dads who have saved and preserved most all of their kid’s tees from camp, school, church or from  their own  Harley Davidson adventures.

Shirts from Denver found their way to
me via the Internet. These are on the
 floor in the "figuring out what to do" design phase.

I’ve found out that tee-shirt quilts are the quilts that everyone loves but it’s hard to find a good woman to make them. I fill a niche by being one of the hand full of women in Jacksonville who will make them. The quilt shops aren’t interested in making them and luckily they send the jobs my way. Word of mouth has also beaten a path to my door. Oddly enough, making this kind of quilt is more popular than ever and I guess it could be considered “green”. Oh yea. It is recycling. The demand for women who make them is large enough that I usually have a job come my way at least monthly and graduation time is the busiest.

So what do you do when you can’t part with your old shirts? You wash them, fold them neatly and send them to me.  I slash them in to squares, sew them together and make a great quilt.  You can cuddle up under one and remember all those earth day events you attended, the championships you won, the causes you believed in, the guy who ran for office and the food that missed your mouth.

There was a time when young girls (like me) didn't even own a tee-shirt. My brother wore tee-shirts and all the kids playing out in the street wore tee-shirts, but they almost always had horizontal stripes on them and came from J.C. Penney. If only my Mom had preserved those Davy Crocket tee shirts in acid free paper. Back then, shirts rarely had an advertisement or hilarious social commentary printed on them except maybe the Izod alligator who came into play for Dad’s taste in cotton knit.. Boys were not allowed to wear tee-shirts to high school and seeing a man on the street in the fifties sporting a plain white tee usually meant he worked  under the hood of a car, hung out at a gas station or was in the Navy. Basically you were wearing your UNDERWEAR as OUTERWEAR.

Marlon

James Dean

No pockets-no problem. You just tucked those cigs in your sleeve and rolled them up neatly. Carrying objects in your sleeve had a two-fold purpose: 1) it made a great makeshift pocket and 2) it showed off gorgeous biceps like those of Marlin Brando, Paul Newman and James Dean, all tee-shirt icons and notable cigarette smokers. My Dad always wore a sleeveless, collarless “undershirt” with his dress shirts. When I was eight or nine years old, I  had the job of removing his starched and pressed dress shirts from the cardboard boxes that they came back from the dry cleaner in and I would stack them neatly in his shirt drawer. I also folded and put away his undershirts after my mother finished ironing them. My husband and son have always done their own laundry and would be hard pressed to visualize me ironing any one's underwear. In my eyes, this qualifies my mother easily for sainthood.

What wearing an undershirt can do for a man.

My Dad never wore tee-shirts where you could see them, but he did wear them as undershirts that guaranteed his crisply ironed Van Huesen would remain that way all day and it was the sign (and still is) of a well-dressed man.  A men’s fashion website advises: “Be sure to wear a short-sleeve, white T-shirt under your shirts and sweaters. Not only does this protect your tops from sweat and deodorant stains, it makes you look adult-y and fashion-y”. I happen to agree whole heartedly.  I don’t use underwear in the quilts I create, so please don’t ask me to. I will however, include cut up bathing suits, photos transferred to fabric and most any other kind of memento you have that can be ironed and sewn.. 

Getting back to the quilts....

When someone brings me a collection of tee-shirt to turn into a quilt, I am tickled to death and I am the perfect person for the job. Making a few extra bucks for doing what I love is about as good as it gets.

My fee is $.08  per square inch plus the materials  and this has turned out to be a good formula so far.  As I cut out each shirt and piece it to the next shirt, my sewing machine runs over a 50/50 cotton-poly memory that deserves a proper burial. While sewing certain tee-shirts that have come my way, I imagine all sorts of things. I think about a Bob Dylan concert or someone else’s trip to Peru and vision myself participating in a walk for Aids or the marathon I’ll never be able to run. Many of the the quilts are intended as graduation gifts as I receive most of my calls to “create” towards the end of May. That’s cutting it a little short since graduations are usually in early June. Some deadlines I just can’t meet so I have had to turn jobs down in the past. To remedy this, I recruited my two closest and dependable quilting friends to help out. Having worked for the phone company, I did pick up a desire to please my customers and I get my customers involved in where each block is placed since they know best which shirt should be front and center and which ones can be eliminated totally. Everyone takes all this very seriously and I’m no exception.

My son has some great tee-shirts. One says, “I like my women like I like my coffee…ground up and in the freezer. “ My other favorite of his says, “I’m in my own little world….but don’t worry, they know me there”. He has a wonderful sense of humor. I would guess his favorite tee-shirt is a black and yellow “Black Cow Manure” shirt. Gotta love it.

In Memory of Carmen

This past October, I was called upon by a loving father to create two quilts, one for each of his children. The clothing belonged to their mother and the plan was to have the quilts ready for Christmas. This will be the first Christmas this family will be without her. A beautiful woman who was a Navy nurse for 26 years, passed away and as with all family deaths, someone has the special job of disposing the clothing that adorned and in a small way defined their wife and mother. The father wanted something extra special for his children to have. The vacations they shared as a family, the comfy pj’s worn around the breakfast table on a Sunday morning and the well worn shirts saved for the beach or working in the garden…they were all there…These special bits and pieces were mine now to make a memory for them. I guarded them like gold and put my creative side into action hopefully to return to the father a gift of love he can proudly give to his children. It was an honor for me to make this thoughtful momento.  Snuggling up under a quilt made from my own mother’s clothes is something I will never be able to do. I wish I had thought of doing this back when I was going through her closet. Instead, her clothes were given to a favorite aunt with the remainder going to Good Will. 

Sadly, after delivering a finished quilt, I am out of the picture. I never get to see the reaction of the receiver at their graduation party or witness the inevitable tears when someone looks over a quilt of favorite shirts from days past or the shirts that belonged to a loved one who is no longer with them. Oh well, maybe someday.

Meanwhile, I’ll be cutting and sewing that cotton knit that has woven itself into the American culture and into my sewing life.  I enjoy every minute of trying to make them all fit together.