BUSINESS: Journey Quilt Company

Trish Maxwell of Journey Quilt Company is a combination of quilter, artist and storyteller. The business owner and sewing guru creates Mosaic T-shirt Quilts from people’s favorite tees, assembling the swatches of fabric to create a cozy quilt that paints a picture of that person’s life. “By the time we have transformed a stack of t-shirts—trimming, mapping, assembling and quilting them—you feel like you know this person and you’ve become friends. It’s like reading a book. These are fabric scrapbooks of people’s lives.”

Maxwell had sewn her first quilt about 20 years ago, but it wasn’t until a friend asked her to piece together a t-shirt quilt for her daughter’s high school graduation that she realized she had a real passion for what she calls the “Mosaic T-shirt Quilt.” She wanted to create something more unique than a traditional t-shirt quilt in which all the fabric blocks are the same size and lined up in rows. In traditional t-shirt quilts, small graphics can look lost, while larger graphics would be cut off. “In Mosaic T-shirt Quilts, each piece is trimmed down based on the size of the graphic so you don’t lose any of the graphic or have any wasted space,” she said. “Then I create a map and reassemble them like a puzzle.” She also encourages her customers to collaborate on the overall finished product design by selecting edging, backing, binding fabrics, colors and border styles.

Maxwell also offers Mosaic Quilt Kits allowing people to write sentimental words of congratulations, wisdom and humor on pre-cut fabric squares using fabric pens. They then return the fabric squares to the shop to be assembled and quilted into today’s modern version of a guest book or scrapbook. She says that Mosaic Quilt Kits are most often used for family and friend celebrations such as baby showers, weddings and graduations.

Having opened its doors in Edmond in October 2014, Journey Quilt Company doubles as a gallery, with customers’ quilts displayed on the walls as they wait to be taken home. You might see quilts themed with dance and cheer, sports, worldwide travel, or even Harley Davidson. Each shirt holds a memory and each quilt tells a story. “I encourage everyone to take a second look at their closet. So many memories exist in the t-shirts we collect. My goal with Journey Quilt Company is to help people protect their memories and enjoy them as a functional piece of art in the form of a quilt.”

To learn more, visit JourneyQuiltCo.com, call 340-0444 or stop by 16700 N. Penn Ave., Edmond.