Ideas for what to make from my dad's shirts!
 

After my dad passed away, I have many of my dad's shirts. I would like some unique ideas of what to make with them. I would like to gift them to my mom and sisters.

The easiest is to deconstruct the shirts and make quilts. I would cut 8.5 inch squares from the backs and put them together with a coordinating sashing of about 2.5 inches. For a 60ish x 80ish throw, you would need 48 squares, sashing in between and the same width border all around the outside. Backed with Minky or Fireside, it would be like a warm hug from your Dad.

I have also seen pillows made from a shirt. the buttoned front closes the pillow over the form. I have also seen aprons made from shirts. Here is one link. I know there are many. https://www.allfreesewing.com/Refash...ns-Shirt-Apron

Make Christmas ornaments out of them. That way, a part of him is always with you for the holidays.

Whatever you choose to make, it will be a cherished keepsake. My father-in-law wore the ugliest ties you can imagine, including one with a hula girl and one with a pheasant on it. From the day we first met, I always gave him a bad time about them, but he persisted in wearing them, even when we would buy him beautiful new ones. The first Christmas after he he passed away, my mother-in-law made a beautiful hand stitched crazy quilt pillow for me and one for my sister-in-law. She had cut all the ties in half so that one of us would receive the wide end or the narrow end from each tie. In the center of my pillow was the wide end with the hula girl and the narrow end with that awful pheasant!! That was 50 years ago, and that beautifully stitched pillow still fills my heart with love and my eyes with tears.

One of the ladies in my sewing group this year started making Bears from shirts. There are free and low cost "Memory Bear" patterns. She adjusted her pattern and includes a pocket on the front in order to hold a keepsake if desired (pockets often have company names or logos etc). Her design uses one large shirt each, but she has also done them using multiple shirts to make multiple bears, that is one arm is from one shirt, the body from another, and so forth so that all the kids had pieces of all the shirts.

I have seen many quilts made from basic office shirts, mostly basic white with blue and other solid color shirts, plus the subtle striped ones, along with some plaids and maybe some Hawaiian or casual Friday options (which for my engineers usually meant no ties and short sleeves instead of long) Basic repeated designs using simple shapes seem to work best in my opinion, so traditional patterns like stars and 4- or 9-patch units work well.

There is a lot of fabric in shirts, the backs are usually in good shape even if there are stains on front or worn areas. Just the back is at least a fat quarter, adding in the rest you have about yard+ per shirt. To practice or if you need a few more, you can get good some good deals at thrift stores for nice usable fabric for around $2 a shirt (and less if they have bargain days or "buy the pound/bag" options. Check out the men's X+ sizes! Depending on what your dad's shirts are made from, I'd consider any blends to be suitable to use with the full cotton, but you might want to look at the labels when buying extra shirts.

I would love to make a quilt from Hawaiian shirts, with all of their beautiful colors. My husband has a ton of them, but they are just too thin, or flimsy to quilt with.

I know, I'm on an Elizabeth Hartman thing right now, my apologies, but she has some clever patterns that have animals wearing clothing. Perhaps there is a dog, or cat lover that would like an EH quilt made with Dad's shirts. Put the 2 loves together.

I suggest YouTube. I like Catbird Quilts, she shows how to deconstruct and talks about which patterns work best with shirts.

I made a teddy bear with some shirts, for a QB friend to give to a grieving widow she knew. One of the shirts was a gaudy yellow Hawaiian style shirt, which the wife hated. Her hubby only wore it to aggravate her. So I thought it would be funny to make the bear a shirt out of that yellow Hawaiian! It kept going a joke between her and her hubby. If she truly did hate it, it was removable. Give me a sec and I'll post a pic.