Since 1992, we have made over 50 Hard Rock Café T-shirt quilts. They are so much fun to make. When I sat down to write this article about planning a Hard Rock Café T-shirt quilt, I thought about how many different Hard Rock Café there are.
"As of July 2024, Hard Rock International has 248 venues in 76 countries, including 172 bar or cafe-restaurants, 37 hotels, and 11 casinos."
Then I pause to think about how many I have visited. Uh, just one. Although I think this says more about my rural existence rather than restaurants themselves.
The customers for who I have made Hark Rock Cafés T-shirt Quilts for for had visited more Hark Rock Cafés than I could even imagine. Many of these customers have Hard Rock Café T-shirts from around the world. When we make their quilts, it’s like a world travelogue. Prague, Paris, Budapest, Rome, Moscow, London and Chicago.
Do You Have to be a World Traveler to Collect Hard Rock Café T-shirts?
That depends on you! Are you a purest? Or are you a Hard Rock Café enthusiast?
Collect Only From Restaurants You Have Visited
There are some people who will only use T-shirts from locations that they or someone they knew have visited. Many of these people have spent years collecting their T-shirts. And the quilt is as much a travel quilt as it is a Hard Rock Café quilt.
- Collect Them However You Can
Other people we have made a Hard Rock Café T-shirt quilt for have just collected the T-shirts from where ever they could find them. Garage sales, thrift stores or on eBay – they just love Hard Rock and wanted a quilt made.
That's me! I made myself a Hard Rock Café T-shirt quilt from T-shirts I have collected from eBay. I wanted to make an all white stained-glass T-shirt quilt and I need a theme. And that theme was Hard Rock Café.
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Collecting T-shirts by Design Style
You have two options when collecting hard rock café T-shirts.
The first is to collect the basic design with the cities name below the logo. The advantage to this is that you don’t have to think about which T-shirt you choose. Just perhaps the color.
The disadvantage is that if you have a quilt made from these T-shirts, it will be less interesting.
The first is to collect the basic design with the cities name below the logo. The advantage to this is that you don’t have to think about which T-shirt you choose. Just perhaps the color.
- The second option is to choose a different style of T-shirt from every location you visit. The different designs are based on the city the restaurant is in.
For example, if you are in Nashville, the design may have a guitar on it that represents the cities country music heritage.
Your T-shirt quilt will be much more interesting and reflective of your travels if you choose the different designs unique to the city you’re in.
Other Collecting Considerations
Color
There are so many color options to consider. Here are just 5 to consider…
The easiest is a one-color scheme. So for example, collect all white shirts or all black shirts. Read more about all white quilts here.- Another option is to choose three or four colors and collect T-shirts only in those four colors. So for example, you could collect blue, green and brown shirts. It wouldn’t matter if the blues were all different. But your quilt would only have T-shirts in the blue, the brown or the green families.
- Collect from one color family. For example, collect any T-shirt in the blue family.
- Collect earth tones – such as browns, oranges, greens and tans. Or collect jewel tones – such as purples, dark royal blues, fuchsia and teals.
- Collect all colored T-shirt and skip any that are black, white, tan or gray.
Design Size
If you are collecting T-shirts with a quilt in mind, I would suggest trying to get the most bang for your buck. This means, getting the T-shirt will the most square inches of designs that you can. So if you can, get shirts with a design on the front and the back.
In the photo here, we are getting ready to long-arm machine quilt a Hard Rock Café quilt.
Conclusion
For a puzzle style T-shirt quilt, you want a variety of sizes – from very little to very large. The variety will make for a more interesting quilt that is puzzles together. If you want a traditional style quilt where all the blocks are the same size, you would want to collect T-shirts with graphics that are all one size. Read more about different style T-shirt quilts here.Whether you find your Hard Rock Café T-shirts on the Internet or in Istanbul, the quilt they can make will be worth the time and effort it took to collect them.
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