A baby clothes quilt is filled with sweet memories. I’m sharing a simple tutorial that will teach you how to make this handmade quilt with old baby clothes.
Quick story behind this baby clothes quilt. The other day, I was sorting all of the clothes that the girls have outgrown and I was making a keep pile and donate pile. At the end of the hour, I simply had one big, giant “keep” pile. Since I like recycled crafts, I thought hard about how I could reuse these and preserve them. Slowly I started putting together this Baby Clothes Quilt Idea.
You can make this kind of a memory quilt with baby onesies, old T shirts, or even old saris. Making a quilt out of old clothes is a great way to preserve memories.
There were just too many memories associated with each one of those items. I might have held a food-stained onesie to my chest and wept a little too “My babies aren’t babies anymore!!”
Fast forward to later that night, after the kids were in bed, craftspiration struck! I could cut into those baby onesies and make a quilt!
A handmade quilt is a blanket made with love. And this quilt here? This one is a quilt made of baby memories
making a quilt out of old clothes Tips:
- Cutting out the quilt squares will probably take the longest time, simply because each outfit will probably have a story behind it and you will just spend minutes staring at that tiny little outfit wondering how your kid ever used to fit into something that small.
- Baby clothes are made of jersey fabrics that would not stay true to size so interspacing plain white cotton fabric helps stabilize them.
- You could also use a thin gauze alternately and sew each block with the gauze as a backing so that it retains its true square shape.
- I used plain cotton fabric as blocks in between so that it would also break up the patterns of the baby clothes and at places highlight the little embroideries that might be there.
Tools used:
Baby Clothes Quilt Tutorial:
Cut out squares depending on how large you want your quilt to be.
1. I used the Rotary ruler to cut 4 by 4 inches (plus seam allowance) squares of the onesies. Newborn clothes are really tiny, and I found it hard to get squares of fabric larger than 4 inches.
2. Next, cut out 4 by 8 inch (plus seam allowances) rectangles from some plain cream cotton fabric.
3. Continue sewing blocks together till you have built the entire quilt front.
4. Sandwich the quilt front with an interface and add a simple backing. Quilt layers together. I tied my layers together for a simple look. The back of the quilt is a simple pink train fabric, no fancy piecing there.
how to make a memory quilt from clothes:
This technique need not be only for cute baby clothes, you can easily use this to make a memory quilt of any kind of clothing of your loved ones.
Here is my finished baby clothes quilt blanket! This turned out so cute, colorful, and has such a sweet story to it. This is the girls’ favorite snuggle blanket now. I love how I got to reuse old baby clothes (even the stained ones!) and make something unique out of them.
For the quilt binding, I simply folded the backing fabric and created a neat folded seam.
ALSO READ: How to finish a Quilt in 4 simple steps
The finished handmade quilt is lays flat on a full size bed. You can make a smaller twin size quilt instead too.
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