Normally when I do a summary for a quilt, I only include a few photos and a little background. For this one I’m going to include a lot of detail for the benefit of the recipient family.
In October of 2025 one of our neighbors lost their son in a tragic car accident. Two other sons were seriously injured. I had only met the Mom (Kendra) once and had not met the rest of the family. I wanted to do something for them but didn’t know them well enough to know what that would be. A few weeks later she posted on Facebook looking for someone to make a quilt from her son’s clothing. I had made several memory quilts in the past and found them to be very challenging and emotionally exhausting. I never wanted to make another. Instead, I offered to help her find someone to make the quilt and to help her identify which clothes would work. She accepted my offer.
After meeting Kendra, I knew I had to make the quilt. We spent about an hour together and I had found a really lovely family. After making sure the clothing didn’t contain any fragrances that would bother me I offered to make the quilt for her and she accepted. I truly felt called to make the quilt for Zane’s family.
She sorted all the clothes into “must include” and “can include”. Later I even asked for more pieces, especially plaid. My plan was to make a quilt that would be about 65″ x 80″, just the right size to curl up on the couch. I knew that I would follow the basic layout that I used in my Keepsake quilts. The pattern is built around framed blocks. I like this approach because it elevates the t-shirt quilt a little. I cut out the t-shirt blocks using measurements that are multiples of 3″. The frames are cut from pants and shorts and are 1.5″ finished.
T-shirt fabrics have to be interfaced to be stable enough to use in a quilt. All told, I used over 20 yards of interfacing just in the quilt. That plus pants fabrics make for a very heavy quilt.
Some of the blocks had to be pieced to make the block the right size. The orange one required 4 pieces to get the block to size. I made all of the framed blocks before I worked on the layout. When I cut the frame fabrics, I made sure to include some of the “flaws” from the fabric. It might be a pocket shadow, a hem or some other feature. I think it highlighted the personal nature of the fabrics that are in the quilt. I placed all the framed blocks on my design wall to start to get an idea of what the quilt might look like.
Before I could work on the layout, I had to figure out what to do with some plaid fabrics. My original plan was to use them for sashing or background but I could not design a way to use them in a cohesive way. Every idea I thought of seemed too chaotic. My usual ways to solve design challenges is to sleep on it. One morning I woke up and had the idea to use the plaids for a cross in the center of the quilt. I had a feeling that the plaid shirts might have been his church shirts and that was confirmed when I delivered the quilt.
Once I had the cross planned I could get to the design stage. I tried doing this in the Electric Quilt program but after wasting a whole day, I reverted to paper. I work best on paper. I made squares for each piece and then arranged and rearranged until I had a plan. Then I set the sheet down for a minute and all the pieces blew off! I got everything back in place and taped it down.
Zane had a lot of black and navy t-shirts and they gave me the fabric I needed for the background to be dark. The design process took a few evenings before I got to this master layout.
Above are some progress photos of it coming together on the design wall starting with arranging the blocks on the wall and then adding the rough layout for the cross. From there I worked section by section putting it all together. Every section had a lot of fussy cutting so it took about a week to get the top together. I got the top completed mid-January, just a few days before we left for our winter vacation in Tucson. I used my Cricut to make the initials block in the center of the cross. Once I had the general layout, this top came together quite easily. It took a lot of time, but I didn’t have any serious problems or challenges.
The whole time I was making the quilt I kept thinking about Zane’s 9 siblings. There was enough fabric left to make something for them. While on vacation I pondered several ideas: placemats, bed runners, wall-hangings but I realized that what they needed were hugs from their brother. The sibling gift needed to be a pillow.
I consulted with Kendra and confirmed that the 4 most important things to Zane were family, faith, fitness and patriotism. I used that to guide the pillow design. I ordered the 15″ pillow forms. They came in sets of 6 so I made 12 pillows, giving them 3 extras for other people feeling the need for a hug from Zane. Maybe a best friend, girlfriend, grandparents or a mentor. Whoever needs one will have one.
The pillows are made from 25 different fabrics. That required cutting 300 3.5″ squares and 12 each of the iron on motifs. The meant another 5 yards or so of interfacing and lots of work on the Cricut for the icons. The plaids took the longest because I had to cut each one individually from scraps. I barely had enough plaid fabric left for the pillows, but, like everything else, it magically worked out. It took 2 days just to cut out all of the squares.
The pillow backs are made from whatever was left. There are pieces of sweatshirts, pants, shorts, t-shirts, sweatpants and one is made entirely from one shirt front. I used the leftover plaid shirt button plackets for the closure on 6 pillows and inserted zippers for the others. The backs were as much fun to make as the fronts.
Here’s 1 finished pillow. As with the quilt, these were also a joy to work on. Everything just came together smoothly.
I wanted the pillows to be very sturdy so I’ve backed the pillow front with batting and interfacing and then topstitched along both sides of every seam for extra strength. When I sewed the front and back together, I stitched around twice. They will be able to remove the pillow form and wash these pillows.
Here are all 12 pillows done and ready for delivery.
Next it was time to get back to the quilt and the first thing I needed was a back. Zane was a big fan of UNC so I used the blue UNC t-shirt to match up the blue to dye the backing.
Finally, it was time to quilt. I had a lot of anxiety over this. It’s a super thick and heavy quilt and that can often cause tension problems. I also picked a thread that is usually finicky. But I wanted the bronze color and decided to go with it anyway.
This was when I knew for sure that Zane had been looking over me during this whole time. I used 5 different bobbins and didn’t have to adjust the tension once and didn’t have one thread break. That constitutes a miracle for my quilting experiences.
I quilted it with a patriotic pantograph pattern that I used often with the veteran’s quilts. On the right, you can see how well the backing matches the UNC block. The binding is made from the plaid shirts and it worked out really well. (the blue is showing up much darker in these photos than in real life.)
By total coincidence, the same plaid fabric landed at every corner. It was the lightest one which was perfect for the bulky corners. Even the join spot was at a place where both fabrics were the same. Nothing about that was planned. It was just another point in the process where things just magically worked out.
The last steps were adding the label and making a zippered storage bag for the quilt. Kendra selected the Bible quote for the label and it’s perfect. I’m sorry for the blurry label photo. I didn’t notice until I had already delivered the quilt.
I was so happy to be able to make this quilt for the family. I’m glad they trusted me to do this. They blindly gave me treasures of Zane’s life and trusted me to do something with it. When I offered to make it, none of us knew how it might turn out. I delivered it March 6, 2026. In the end it’s the most important quilt that I’ll make in 2026, by far.
