I'll bet if you ask around you can find someone local who makes these types of quilts all the time. I actually know someone around my house who does it because she promotes them every now and then on Facebook. So you can save your wife a lot of time and energy by checking around.
DD has kept one jersey for each team she has played for but uses the other gear for practice and workouts. She played full time in 3 orgs and loved two of them. So those items have been worn until its time to throw them away. The other were discarded as soon as she moved on from that particular team. As a coach for two of the orgs, I have quite a bit of fan gear as well. Both were great experiences for me with fond memories, so I have held on to some of the gear from each.
We have all of them in a bin waiting for the day when the wife takes them to a friend to sew into a quilt. I noticed that this seems to be pretty popular in this thread. Our friend used to have a sewing business and tells us she wants to make the quilt but life happens and something always comes up. One day, that quilt will be made.
Same here...quilt when she went off to play college ball. Quilt is in her apartment bedroom along with some throw pillows made from some of the better looking leftovers. The rest were donated to our local police department which has a SB league for underprivileged kids. They use them as practice jerseys.
We kept them all and then when it was time for my daughter to get senior pictures done, we had a picture taken of her with all her jerseys hung on the fence at the softball field.
Funny story as our whole team just switched organizations and I was talking to the HC about what he did with all his old gear. He said he donated his to a near by good will after the switch, but about about 2 months after saw what appeared to be a homeless person pushing a shopping cart down the street in a full team merch from our previous organization. At least it's getting used.
As a coaches gift for my DD's 2nd year 12u All-Star team, my wife had each player give her a tournament t-shirt or old jersey and made a quilt for the Head Coach.