Sleepers quilt
 

I was asked to make a quilt from baby sleepers. Has anyone made one before? I am wondering if the sleepers need a fusible interfacing. Would it be difficult to make? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I would think the fabric would be so thin that it would not last. The fusible interfacing idea sounds like a good solution.

I would run away from the idea as fast as I could.

An exception might be if it was to be for a memory quilt for a child that died.

I'm curious. Why would you say that? I'm not very experienced at quilting, so would like to know why I might not want to do that.

If I understand what baby sleepers are, they are thin, t-shirt type material. They are obviously small with lots of zippers, snaps or such which could make design difficult..... Ok, I get it - kinda, sorta.

But, they are knit, not going to ravel, could be interfaced for stability and are kind of cute.

bkay

Lol, Bear!

The only way I would do sleepers would be to applique the fronts of them onto cotton quilting fabric. And as they are knit, yes you do need a fusible backing such as you use for T shirt quilts. French Fuse or another tricot interfacing is what I use.

If you are up for the project, go for it!

That's the only way I can envision using them - unless one cut them apart - and then what would be the point of using them?

If I remember sleepers correctly, they were horrible to fold and always looked like a wad - worse than fitted sheets that had elastic all the way around - they were knit - had snaps - and the really old ones had a drawstring on the bottom.

I would look at them very carefully before committing to trying to use them. They might be very worn - or they might be almost new -

Some of the knits were extremely stretchy -

Knits are not created equally. There are some knits I would consider using "as is" in a quilting project - they have almost no stretch. One needs to consider fiber content, stretchiness, density/thickness of the fabric - all sorts of factors.

Several years ago at The Minnesota Quilt Show - someone had appliquéd what looked like old, faded, rumpled nightgowns to a quilt. The whole thing looked like an unmade made to me. Whatever the point of it was, I think I missed it.

I think it is possible to do something "cute" with sleepers - the idea of working with them just does not appeal to me - at all.

Sleepers are going to make huge blocks! I've seen the ones using smaller pieces of clothing, like little dresses, but nothing as big as a sleeper. It sounds like a real challenge working with the fasteners and the feet. I worked with one sleeper for my grandson. Of course, it was a favorite but the puppy chewed on it and ruined it. That sleeper went into 3 projects, using the applique on the sleeper. One of the biggest pieces went into a bib but the smallest became a book on the shelf of one of those bookshelf wall hangings. Not much left of the sleeper but the memories and I hate throwing the last of it away!

Same idea as a T-Shirt quilt. If you are a beginning quilter, this can be a challenge. It is stretchy, so you need to deal with that. With a T-shirt, you put fusible behind the piece you want, fuse and then cut it out. Because this is a smaller item and is irregular in shape, it might be an easier option to attach it to a background piece, stitch it down (think applique) and then maybe do some decorative echo stitching on the background. Once you have enough blocks made, I would sash them in a coordinating color and use that same color in a border. This would pull them all together and make the sleepers be the stars. Also, doing it as one block at a time is a lot easier on a beginner, you get to feel a sense of accomplishment with each completed block!

Not a quilt, but these are fun:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/142989...68363/?lp=true

I regret that I didn't make a quilt using the cute embroidered and appliqued pieces cut from my grandson's baby clothes. It would be no different than making a t-shirt quilt, and would have special memories, especially for the mom, and later for the grown-up baby. I would not use much of each sleeper, just enough to have a representation of each one, such as squares of the cute print fabrics or whatever little design there might be on the front.

I think of Sleeper as made from a fleece fabric to keep the baby warm. Would cut the Sleeper into squares and make a quilt similar to a Rag quilt.

I just saw a beautiful baby quilt the other day that uses the sleepers, I am not absolutely positive but I think it was on Pinterest. It just looks like the person making it attached the sleepers to fabric in a block. There might have been 6 or 9 not sure. I hope you can find it I'm sure it's exactly what you are looking for. Good luck!

Aha! "Now I see said the blind man"! When I posted yesterday, I had in mind the creations I've seen using the entire piece of clothing. Of course, you can use the knits from sleepers and work those up just as you would tshirt fabric with a stabilizer. My concern would be that the available fabric in each sleeper would be very small blocks, depending on the size of the sleeper. Newborn wouldn't make many blocks of any size worth working with.

I've seen the bears made of sleepers and they are darling. Those are a good way to preserve memories of babyhood. One of my friends makes those and puts a matching sleeper with them for gifts.