Cotton shirts from the thrift store, ready to be transformed
Laying out the shirt stripe box pattern
The Shirt Stripes Box quilt design, featured in Kaffe Fassett’s Passionate Patchwork, is an invitation to upcycle everyday fabric as a clever, eye-fooling quilt.
Thrift stores all over carry good-quality cotton men’s striped shirts. Fabric lovers will notice the better quality fabric on the men’s racks, while the women’s racks mostly feature a dismal array of faded, sagging synthetic blends that didn’t look great even when they were new. But the cotton stripes designed for men to wear to the office — do men still wear striped, collared, button-front shirts to the office? — can be found in new or near-new condition for a few bucks, making them an inexpensive source of craft fabric. The color range is typically narrow. Blue and white and gray predominate, though green, red, and yellow variations are common. Just now and then one stumbles on a bold color combination, or a shot of purple or orange, enough to light up any quilt.
The Shirt Stripe Box pattern comes with three templates for triangles, best photocopied and pasted to cardboard for working templates. It’s simple to outline the triangles on the fabric with a pencil, and cut out the triangles with one’s best shears. I fussy-cut some stripes to get perfectly matched triangles, and let some triangles take up odd corners in more randomly. This process was downright addictive; it’s easy to cut more triangles than you need.
Two ways to use the shirt strip box squares
The next step is sewing together squares. Some can be perfectly matched, emphasizing the square box effect, while others use mismatched triangles in the same fabric, or variations of two, three, or four different stripes in a single square. The pattern uses three sizes of square (3.5”, 6.5”, 12.5”); you can follow the layout provided or mix up your own.
The first two quilts were for my nephews, then aged 8 and 12. One followed the Fassett pattern fairly closely. For the second, I used only the largest squares, laying them out on point to make a simpler, more spacious quilt. The outer triangles of this quilt are not striped, but made from a plain blue work shirt, contributed by my dad, grandfather to the recipient.
Quilt #1
Backing fabric for both quilts is a neutral gray with a small white pattern. I quilted them on my regular home machine, following the grid of squares and the diagonals of each individual square, stitching in the ditch. Binding is dark blue. `These are not fancy quilts!
About a year later I still had a few squares pieced and many triangles cut, so I made a smaller quilt (about 50” square) for the Welcome Blanket project. Welcome Blanket encourages crafters to donate these smallish blankets — quilted, knitted, woven, or crocheted — along with the contributor’s own family immigration story. The blankets are frequently displayed in a group before being given to immigrants and refugees. Welcome Blankets have featured in museums, airports, and other venues: I went to the Smart Museum at the University of Chicago to see the show, and spotted a blanket I’d made there. You can read about the project’s history and how to contribute at WelcomeBlanket.org.
Small Quilt for WelcomeBlanket.org
This pattern is fun to make, and gave me a perfect excuse to visit thrift stores and collect some beautiful fabrics. Some of the stripes are still on hand for the next project.
