Dan's T-Shirt Quilt

My son turned 40 and so I thought it was time to send him the T-shirt memory quilt I'd made him from when he graduated high school, class of 2001. The main categories were 

SPORTS: swimming Sunset Sea Serpents, water polo, life guarding, wrestling, baseball buddy
ACADEMICS: Mendenhall Middle School, Granada High School, MathCounts
CAMPING: as camper, as a CILT (camper in leadership training), at Ravencliff, at Loma Mar

Most T-shirt quilt patterns I have seen cut all the T-shirts the same size and then add uniform sashing in between. This was my first time and I cut out each shirt with minimum border around the image. This made it difficult to assemble with all the varying sizes. I scratched my head a lot with the math for the sashing sizes, colors, and quantities. Also for my first time, the quilting is minimal.

Most images are easily interpreted as sports, academics or camping. One block in the lower portion of the upper left quadrant stands out though – "BAGELS are DONUTS on Tuesday". What does that mean? That shirt commemorates when Dan was in leadership training at a camp. A truck had gotten stuck in the mud and Dan stood at the back pushing to get it free while someone else rev'd the motor to rock it out. One rear wheel kicked up a stone that flew up and hit Dan on the forehead. Although never unconscious he was being watched for a possible concussion. He did babble a bit and one of the phrases he uttered was, "BAGELS are DONUTS on Tuesday". The staff, once the concern had evolved to amusement, had a T-shirt made up for him to remember the incident.

Here are closeups of the remaining three quadrants of the quilt in clockwise order: upper right, lower right, lower left.

When it came to choosing a color for the backing, I left the choice up to Dan. Since he would be going off to Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, he chose green because the college's school colors were green and gold. The backing fabric also has gold stars scattered throughout.

The quilt never went off to college. At the time, Dan hedged that he did not want to risk it on his bed. Maybe he was just headed off for bigger and better pursuits. But the T-shirt quilt is a good retrospective gift for a special 40th birthday. A wife and four kids later, he is smiling for both the past and the present.