I recently finished this quilt for a mother to give her adult son for Christmas – he is working towards becoming a Baptist minister, and these are t-shirts from various mission projects and Christian youth groups he has been involved with along the way. The only direction she gave me was to use Univeristy of Georgia colors, but no actual bull dog or UGA fabric… So I ran with just the red and black color scheme – and decided to use some traditional quilt blocks, like pinwheels and half square triangles, to set off the t-shirts, yet also pull it all together into a more unified theme.
I used a 80/20 cotton/polyester batting, and quilted it on my long arm using clear polyester thread, so that you end up only seeing the texture of the quilting, without it obscuring the actual writing or images on the t-shirts themselves. These shots of the back are after a machine washing and drying, so the characteristic “quilty” look is visible even with the invisible thread.
As usual, one of our furry friends joined in to help – this is our cat helping me put on the binding. Sweet!
My friend had a few repeat t-shirts, so instead of putting those in the quilt, I made a simple matching pillow using just one of them.
When Christmas rolls around, to present the gift, the mom intends to put the quilt and pillow in a big red Santa Claus bag – and wanted something special to use as a gift tag. So I embroidered these cloth “tags” for her. They are about 8 inches long with snow flake button holes for a tie to go through.
I know this son will be touched to receive his quilt – it is sized to be a large throw quilt, or to fit over the top of a queen bed – so he will have options regarding where he uses it. I hope he will have many years of enjoyment as he looks at the quilt and remembers what each t-shirt represents!
Awesome quilt – very readable blog!! I now follow two blogs – yours!! And Peyton’s roommate’s fashion blog! I feel so 21st Century!!
Xx >