Memory Quilts Finished Up

After 16 hours of steady dedication, the two memory quilts are finished. If you're interested in making one, check out my initial construction post, Making a Memory Quilt. Today's post provides the tutorial for finishing the quilts.

First I'm showing the quilts, then I'll explain how I finished them up. Here's the first quilt, a lap size, with shirts of flannel and cotton on the front,

and fleece on the back.

The second quilt has heavy flannel and sturdy cotton shirts on the front,

quilt from men's flannel and cotton shirts

and the same on the back. The center row is the only shirt that used two different fabrics inside and out.

I left off on the first post showing the sashing stitched to both pieces on the backside,

and now it's time to deal with the abutted edges on the front side.

For that, I hand stitched a long running stitch, seen with green thread, side-to-side all along the seam. This helps keep the edges together and prevents curling.

Pulling both shirts apart, along with a little pressing, helps that seam lay flat. Then the sashing edge is folded over and pressed just so the fold covers the line of stitching.

With the addition of a bit of school glue to hold it all in place,

the sashing is pressed and then stitched down, right along the edge.

This keeps it from straying too much into the sashing on the backside. In the lower part of this picture, the stitching is close to in the ditch. Further toward the top, the stitching is just visible to the side of the sashing. Looks good enough to me!

The sashing process is repeated to join the rows together,

and then it's time to trim any excess shirting. As for the quilting, I stitched straight lines both horizontally and vertically, using the pockets and sashings as my spacers.