Friday, March 13, 2009

Memory Lane

For Christmas, my mom wanted to do a t-shirt quilt for my sister. I started my t-shirt from my now retired sorority shirts (bc that's what we sorority girls do, buy shirts.... for everything), and we got inspired to surprise my sister.

Looking through keepsake boxes and her highschool shirts was so fun. Each one sparked a memory - even for me. Like her competitive cheerleading shirt, when I drove from Athens to Smyrna and got freaked out on spaghetti junction and then sat in awe as I watched my little sister comanded the stage with her squad. And her little league shirts, and how dad coached us and we played on the same team (we're only 2 years apart) to keep my parents sane instead of carting us to seperate fields and games all season. Or our swim team shirts, when we would stand by the pool and cheer for each other (even though you can't hear anything with that rubber cap over your ears) and all the fun we had traveling and waiting in the bull pen for our next swim. Or our youth softball team, and the summer trip to universal, and going with mom and dad to her university parent's weekend. There were so many and each one was saved for a special reason - even if we didn't realize it at the time.

Yeah, it's lots of fun going down memory lane. This quilt turned out to be a great way to preserve all of those memories in a useful way. We cut the shirts in 13x13 squares and bordered the rows with pink flannel (her favorite color). After this picture was taken, mom bordered the whole quilt in a pink strip. We attached black backing fabric pillow-case style - right sides facing, batting in between, with a quarter-inch seam, leaving enough rooom to turn the quilt right side out. Instead of proper quiliting, We blind stitched the opening closed and added a decorative quarter-inch seam around the perimeter (think vera bradley esque) to finish it off. Mom got thick, black yarn to pseudo-quilt the blanket - tying little black bows in each pink intersection.

All in all a great gift. I wish I had a picture of the finished product, but lil' sister rightfully took it back with her to use in her apartment. I hope you're inspired. I am.... as my unfinished t-shirt quilt lay folded in the craft room... I'm a little side-tracked right now in the craft area :)

Happy Weekend!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I tried to comment on this the other day; but, I had trouble. Do you know someone who makes these quilts, the shirt quilts? I have a bunch of Dad's shirts that I would like to have sewn into a blanket/quilt. I have been searching for months and unable to find someone. I love what you did with your t-shirts. I wish I would have done it with all of mine!