All garments or textiles should be washed, ironed if necessary, and folded neatly. Stinky, wrinkled clothes make a stinky, wrinkled quilt. That said, it’s very important for you to remember that whatever you drop off might smell differently when you pick it up. All spaces, inside and outside, just have their own smell to them, including Hoop & Bee’s studio. So the smell of someone’s cologne or house or that indefinable unique smell that all people just have, that might have some emotional aspect or connection to you, might not be there when you pick up your finished quilt.

If you have any special instructions (ex: “only use back, not front”, or “avoid stain on left shoulder”, or “include the stain on the left shoulder”) please either attach a note with a safety pin or write on a piece of painter’s tape. Please do not cut any items ahead of time.

• Garments can include: T-shirts, flannels, sweatshirts, onesies, scrubs, uniforms, pajamas, skirts, dresses, or generally anything wearable of sentimental value. The same rules of something you’d wear on your body apply to a quilt; the higher the quality, the longer it will last and the better it will feel to the touch.

• You may also want to include non-clothing textiles, such as: photos printed on Printable Fabric Sheets, towels, handkerchiefs, pillow cases, or swaddle wraps.

• Please avoid including anything sharp, glittery, or pointy. Buttons, beads, sequins, puffy paint, glitter, and other embellishments will not make a very cozy or cuddly quilt, and may interfere with our ability to use a longarm to quilt it.

You do not need to bring any other fabric, as we have a selection of solid fabric in stock to be used for the binding, backing, sashing, and borders if necessary. If you would like to bring your own, it should be 100% quilters cotton.

Remember: there is no shame in reusing clothing or materials in a different way than how they were originally meant–after an item has served its intended purpose (a onesie that your child has out-grown or a T-shirt from a family past reunion), it may still retain value to you, and you can feel comfort and joy at keeping it with you in this new form.

How many shirts or items you need depends on a number of factors but as a general rule, it is always better to bring more, just in case. The following are some examples intended to help you in selecting your items before coming in.

For Traditional Grid, the amount of garments or items you’ll need to provide is dependent on the size and look of the quilt you want.

For Standard Size Traditional Grid, each shirt or garment is cut into a 12 1/2 x 12 1/2 inch square, sewn into a “grid” of sashing, which means a strip of solid-colored fabric between the pieces. Each block is sewn together into your desired size of quilt, quilted with a simple stitch pattern on the longarm, and finished with a flange binding.

For Medium Size Traditional Grid, each shirt or garment is cut into a 8 1/2 inch by 8 1/2 inch square, sewn into a “grid” of sashing, which means a strip of fabric between the pieces. Each block is sewn together into your desired size of quilt, quilted with a simple stitch pattern on the longarm, and finished with a flange binding.

• For example: if you would like a queen size quilt made out of graphic T-shirts and:

• You would like each 12 inch square block to feature a graphic

• We are only using the front, and not the back

Then we need 20 shirts to make 20 blocks (4 blocks across, 5 blocks down). However, if these are shirts that have fronts and backs that we want to use, we would only need 10 shirts to make that same quilt.

For Non-Traditional Frameless, each unique piece is sewn together into your desired size of quilt, quilted with a simple stitch pattern on the longarm, and finished with a flange binding. The amount of garments or items you’ll need to provide is dependent on the size and look of the quilt you want, but we can also work with fewer parameters based on what you have.

For example: If you have 10 shirts and we can use every piece of them (the fronts, sleeves, and backs) this will yield a bigger quilt than if you have 30 hoodies that we only want to use the printed graphics and not any “blank” areas of–but we can work with what we have to create a quilt you’ll love.

For Baby Blocks, this can be a bit more tricky as to how many items or garments you’ll need. So much will depend both on the size of the quilt you’d like to have, and how large your items are. Each Baby Block is 12 inches with a sashing around each block and a border around the whole edge. Hoop & Bee specializes in this small piece patchwork, where we use as much of the material as we possibly can, or pick the best (or cutest) parts, to fashion carefully planned and organized 12 x 12 inch blocks. We might use squares as small as 1 x 1 inch if that is all we can salvage, or as large as the item can be cut into. Each block is sewn together into your desired size of quilt, quilted with a simple stitch pattern on the longarm, and finished with a flange binding.

• For example: if you have enough onesies to make 3 blocks across and 4 blocks down, this is a total of 12 blocks giving you a finished quilt that would measure 48x62–this is about the size of a small throw quilt or a very generous wall hanging.

Each block is made according to a grid and will consist of anywhere from 4 to 14 unique pieces. Each piece is cut according to what the very tiny garment might allow–this means a toddler T-shirt with a bold graphic might yield a 12 inch x 8 inch piece, or a newborn bib might yield a 2 inch square.

• For example: We can often make 2-4 pieces from each garment such as a long sleeve shirt that might yield a good sized, usable piece from each the front, the back, and each of the sleeves.

For Custom Quilts, please reach out and we’ll help you to figure out how much is needed to create a quilt the size you want OR what size quilt you can get from what you have.