Necktie Quilt for Josh

My friend’s mother, Leslie, asked me to make a quilt for her son. His stepdad had passed away last year. He had a ton of neckties. So I received 63 neckties with which to make a queen size quilt for Josh. I thought this would be a challenge. As I have never worked with neckties.

I looked online to see what others had done with the neckties. I saw a few that I liked. But some were a little too feminine for Josh. ie, Dresden Plates. I was looking through my 101 Rotary Cut Quilts book and came across a Snowball Strip. The quilt is a fence rail type quilt. I thought it would be perfect. I would be able to use a good majority of the tie with the least amount of waste.

I washed all the ties first. Then took them apart. I needed to stabilize them. I cut the ties into three pieces so they would fit onto the interfacing without much waste. I fused a sheer fusible knit interfacing to the back of all the ties. Once all the ties were stabilized then came the fun part.

I started by taking the widest part of the tie and sewed them together. Then I cut these into 3 1/2 inch strips I kept sewing and cutting. My goal was to make as many 6 1/2 inch blocks as possible. After I sewed a couple of strips together, I realized I needed to cut the tips off the ties. I later used those tips to make hourglass blocks.

There was one tie that I just could not cut up. It was a blue Harley Davidson tie. It had drawings of an eagle and a vintage Harley on it. I cut the tie so I had two squares which are the light blue squares in the center of the quilt.

Most of the ties were dark reds, blues and greens. He had only 6 ties that were light colors. I used them along the border as setting pieces for my square in a square pieces. I also had a few denim shirts to use. Four were Harley shirts, one had a Baseji on it (a Basenji is a bread of dog). The corner pieces are logos from the Harley shirts.

Once the top was complete I needed to construct the backing. Leslie wanted the picture of the Basenji on the back. So I used scraps from the ties to make a frame around the dog. I also saved the tags from the ties and shirts. I fused them to pieced of the shirts and sewed scraps from the ties to them to create an interesting layout for the back of the quilt.

The quilting process was fun. I quilted an all over effect using flames. I thought that was fitting for the Harley Davidson theme. I stitched in the ditch around the smaller grey borders. I did some continuous curved around the square in a square pieced on the borders. I just did not know what to do in the little blue squares. I called my friend Katie to see if she would have any ideas. We bounce a few ideas back and forth until she suggested dog paws. I thought it was perfect. So the dog is walking around the quilt.

I really enjoyed the process of this quilt. Some parts were not as much fun as others but as a whole it was a great learning experience and I know Josh will love his quilt. Merry Christmas Josh.

C