I made three memorial quilts for a client whose mother had died, and I used a combination of the fabrics from her mother's old clothes and fabric from my stash. Only a few of the items of clothing were cotton - the others were synthetic knits, polyester prints, rayon, you name it. I carefully took each item apart, saving any special pieces (like embroidered emblems etc) and made sorted piles by color. I then designed three separate, and utterly distinct, queen-sized quilts to incorporate as much of the fabric as I could. I stabilized the stretchier fabrics with spray starch (most would not have survived the heat required to use fusible interfacing, because they were non-iron fabrics). By surrounding the non-cottons with the added fabric from my stash I kept the tops from becoming too distorted. The rest of the process I did like any other quilt - poly batting, cotton backing, cotton binding.
The three quilts were commissioned items, and took me nearly a year to finish (which I had predicted to my client when she requested them!) She had given me complete "artistic freedom" to play with the fabric, and I am pleased to report that she was very happy with the outcome, even thought the third quilt (not shown below) was a rather wild modern take on a crazy quilt!
Good luck with yours. I'm sure whatever you decide to do will be greatly appreciated!
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Last edited by alisonquilts; 02-24-2012 at 01:40 PM.