Men's Shirts

I think I may have a problem. Have you ever noticed a really nice shirt on a man and thought, wow, would I like to make a quilt with that? I can rarely tell you what the man looked like, age, hair color, etc..., but I can often describe his shirt in detail.

Now that I've got a small stockpile of men's shirts, I've often seen a shirt on a man, leaned over to my husband and whispered, "I have that shirt!" I'm starting to wonder if this is unusual behavior. 

It makes a certain amount of sense. I'm not a floral kind of girl. I love stripes, plaids, and geometric prints. My preferred prints are more masculine in nature, and not always easy to find in quilting cottons.

I am also a fan of upcycling. I'm always looking for ways to reuse things, and over the years I've remade curtains, tablecloths, graduation gowns, etc... into clothes for my kids. I like finding potential in the things others discard. 

My latest men's shirt finish is Allietare, a Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt from few years ago.

Everything but the border fabric and the gold constant are men's shirts. 

One of my grandsons recently got a full-sized bed and needed a larger quilt. I have been pretty swamped lately, so I looked though my UFOs and found this. I knew it would work, and be much faster to finish a UFO than start a whole new quilt. 

Since the top is a bit old for an almost 8 year old, I used some fun motorcycle fabric from stash on the back. The colors worked well with the top, and I had just enough to make the backing. I only have some small scraps left from the backing fabric. 

Besides this finish, my exciting news of the week is that my Studio cutter arrived!

I haven't cut anything with it yet, but you can see some blue fabrics piled on my cutting table waiting to be cut. I moved my Go dies to the shelves right under the Go cutter, and all my Studio strip dies are now in the cabinet behind those shelves. Those blue fabrics need to be cut into strips so I can sub-cut them with a rotary cutter for a baby quilt. The other project waiting to be cut is a wedding quilt, but I think I can cut all of it with the Studio cutter. 

I've already started quilting the next quilt for a different grandson.

The newest quilt goes to this guy who will soon be moving to a big boy bed! I need to have his quilt finished by his birthday in November, so I better go quilt some more!