August 2020 Note: The revamped and expanded Triangles at Play pattern is available in my shop.
Triangles at Play is one of the first quilt patterns I ever wrote, and was originally published in January 2016. Since then, I’ve made it for a friend’s son, made it again as a sample for a Craftsy/Bluprint kit, and now made it twice more as a pair of identical memory quilts for my friend and her mom.
(I can’t think of another pattern I’ve made even twice, so four times is definitely a record!)
Both quilts were made from dress shirts that belonged to my friend’s father, who sadly passed away last summer. I had about a dozen shirts to work with, and I wasn’t sure if that would be enough for two throw-size quilts so I planned to supplement with additional fabric from the start.
After posting a question in my Instagram stories, several people suggested using Essex linen, and I immediately knew that would be perfect! I used 6 fat quarters of the linen in shades of tan, gray, red, and blue. Those pieces — along with four shirts that were solid/mostly solid color — really helped balance out the busyness of the plaids and stripes from the remaining shirts.
For what it’s worth, I did end up having plenty of shirt fabric. Since they were adult men’s shirts, even the sleeves provided a good amount of usable fabric, particularly for the smaller squares. I could have easily made both quilts entirely from shirts without the supplemental linen, but I do think the overall look is stronger with the linen included.
The initial cutting was the worst part — as it always is with memory quilts! It always feels strange to be cutting up clothing, especially when you know there are a lot of important feelings and memories involved.
Also, the quilt is based entirely on half square triangle units and my preferred method of making HSTs is to make them slightly oversized and then trim them down. Trimming 200+ HSTs was tedious, but it’s always worth it in the end!
Each quilt (top and bottom in the photo above, when I basted 3 quilts in one day — ouch, my knees!) is backed and bound with Widescreen by Carolyn Friedlander. The backing is black; the binding is gray. Widescreen may just be my absolute favorite backing and binding fabric because 1) it comes in 108″ width, 2) it comes in several different colors, and 3) it’s just a lovely, neutral, quiet print that goes with anything. It turns out I had enough in my stash already for both quilts, so that was pretty convenient too!
I quilted each with diagonal lines running perpendicular to the diagonals of the HSTs, and therein lies the only difference between the two quilts. On the first one, I quilted the lines 2″ apart but on the second one, I decided to go a bit narrower and quilted them 1.5″ apart. Ha! (Note to self that I preferred the 1.5″ spacing, but really both options looked just fine.)
I was happy to be able to make these quilts for my friend, and I hope she and her mom will be very happy to have these quilts as a reminder of their fond memories of these shirts and of the man who wore them.
