SIL's Second

A year ago this holiday week, my sister-in-law was brave enough to deliver to me a bag of shirts she had gathered from all the runs she has been in over the years. They are such a wonderful chronicle of her running experience, and I was so afraid of messing them up.

There were a lot of shirts, and I didn't want to make the quilt too big. I also had never tried working with polyester shirts; the cotton ones were really straight-forward. So, I decided to split the shirts into to categories and therefore complete two quilts for her.

I finished the first one last spring and delivered that one to her. You can read more about it here. When I found out they would be traveling to visit us again for Thanksgiving holiday I knew I needed to have the second one finished for her.

This one actually came together more easily.  The blocks were bigger and, obviously uniform in size, which is easier to work with. And the finished quilt was smaller; more lap size rather than twin size like last time.

I went "shopping" at my Mom's for the fabrics and found the gorgeous blue used in the sashing, borders, and backing. I couldn't help it; it was so beautiful and went with all the blocks. I wanted to break it up a little though so I added the green stars. I like how it gave the quilt some dimension and variety.  Of course the shirts do that as well.

The shirts are all polyester running shirts and I was surprised at how well they ironed up with the interfacing and quilted up when it came time to finish the quilt. It was a wonderful experiment.

For the quilting I decided to again, keep it simple. I did a large meander on each block, making sure to not cover much of the pictures from the shirts. I didn't want to quilt too much, so I skipped the sashing and instead added some more meander to the border to finish it. It created a real soft, flowing feel to the top.

I used the same green from the stars to bind the quilt, and went for the hand-binding look with this one.  Totally worth it; really finished it nicely!

I was so happy with how this turned out.  The whole project went smoother than I could have hoped. I sure hope she likes it as well. After finishing the first quilt, I was looking at my children's t-shirts in a whole new way. Now I am looking at ALL their old clothes in a whole new way. What else could I do...