MusiCamp quilt

Every year for the last 16 years the music minister and his wife have conducted a music camp at our church during the summer break.  The culmination of the camp is a wonderful musical production the final night.  They are very talented and very committed to the kids and the camp is a big event in our church life.
A few weeks ago one of the ladies who participated in the camp came to ask if I would make a quilt from the shirts from the camps.  She was able to locate a shirt from each of the 16 years.  I decided to try a pattern I had seen previously and wanted to try.  The wide sashing uses black and white fabric, both with musical notes.
Each of the shirts had a similar size design and a pocket size logo with the name and date on it, all except one.  For that one I pulled out my very old very basic embroidery machine and replicated the information on a scrap of the fabric.   It turned out well enough that it isn't obvious.  This pattern worked very well with the two sizes, though because of the large sashing the quilt turned out very large, almost full size.  I wanted some kind of border that would complement the pattern and decided on large blocks of color picked from the black fabric pattern.  It frames the quilt well and makes the over all pattern very happy.  This quilt was almost as much fun as making an I spy quilt, love the bright cheerful colors.

We plan to present the quilt on the final night of the show this year, at the end of July.  I will post this after it is presented.  I don't want to take any chances that they might see it on the web, you never know.

The presentation was last night after the performance.  It was so fun to see Stacy's reaction when she realized what it was.  She had been talking earlier in the week about asking me to make one in a few more years when they had a nice round 20 shirts.  Oh well, a few years early.  Love that smiling face!

Aggie quilt

This quilt was made for a co-worker for her son who is headed to Texas A&M in the fall.  She fell in love with the Aggie fabric and wanted to use it for the sashing.  It was a challenge to work with as I wanted to make sure it was straight and the pattern repeated appropriately.  That added significant time and required more than the usual 2 yards.  But she is happy with the result.  It's too busy for my taste but as long as he likes it, that is what is important.

Remembrance quilt

Several times I have participated in my company's Time and Talent auction for United Way.  Last year a co-worker won the auction and I made the theater quilt for her daughter.  This year another co-worker wanted me to make a quilt from her deceased husband's shirts.  He had died in a car crash over 10 years ago when her two daughters were very small.  She had remarried a widower and together they have raised a large family.  But she still had this box of shirts.  She brought them to me along with a couple of ball caps, his military fatigues and fireman's uniform.  I had some misgivings about cutting into these things.  Definitely the emotional attachment was higher than in any other quilt I've made.

 She decided to use thin denim as sashing, supplemented by a couple of plaid shirts.  I was able to find some flannel similar to the shirts to use as the backing.  I used medium loft poly batting since with the denim the quilt was very heavy and I felt the poly wouldn't add as much weight as cotton.  Another co-worker who is in the marine reserves advised me on the proper way to display the name and US Marines from the fatigues.   I removed the patches from the fireman's uniform and disassembled the caps.  The only place I had difficulty quilting was the patches so I went around them.  The batting gave a nice puffy result with large looping quilting.  The quilt is still very heavy but not excessively so.  With the left over fabric from the plaid shirts I was able to make a pillow case.  She tells me her two daughters are trading off, one gets the quilt for a while and the other gets the pillow case.  The family is happy with the result and I am pleased with how it turned out.