A Boy’s Life as told by his t-shirts

I recently completed the biggest t-shirt quilt I’ve ever done – 78 shirts lovingly saved by one mom for her son. She contacted me to make the t-shirt quilt for his college graduation, so I first assumed it would be his collegiate sports t-shirts – but to my astonishment she had saved every one of his team t-shirts since his t-ball days as a preschooler, all the way through his high school career. How sweet is that?

To keep the quilt a size that would fit on my long arm, I cut the tees as small as I could, keeping only the team name or main part of the shirt. A few shirts I used the back as well since they had all the boys names who played on that team. This quilt ended up 90″x100″ – which will be great for this young man because he is very tall and he should have no trouble stretching out and not have his toes sticking out from under the bottom of the quilt!

I quilted a simple design to keep the lettering on the t-shirts legible, yet dense enough to hold the layers together securely – as well as to add texture and visual interest to the finished quilt.

And here’s one last shot of the quilt back – with a cat scurrying across it – seems like every time I lay a quilt on the floor for a picture either a cat or a dog feels the need to help!