Happy Birthday – Poor Boys

What could be better than a box full of t-shirts???

I received a message on Facebook from a woman asking if I could make a quilt.  She was inquiring on behalf of her son.  The quilt was to be a birthday gift from her son to his boss.  The company her son worked for had an annual gathering, and the business owner’s brother created commemorative t-shirts for each year’s event.  The quilt would include of a selection of some of these shirts.  The business owner’s brother (the one who designed the shirts) had passed away, so the quilt would be both a memorial tribute and a birthday gift. 

When I had unpacked all the shirts, I discovered that they were mostly muted colors with a splash of red thrown in for good measure.   There were 15 shirts, but the quilt would only have 12 panels, so I had some leeway to choose the ones I thought would work best.  Many of the shirts had images on both the front and the back, so that gave me even more images to work with.  And, bonus, a couple of them had writing down a long sleeve!  I was excited to use the lengthwise lettering in a vertical panel between columns. 

My client requested that the quilt needed to be completed and shipped prior to the recipient’s birthday in July! Less than 6 weeks. I felt like I was on one of those crazy fashion or food competition shows where there’s a clock ticking on the corner of the screen!  Hopefully no one would fire me before I finished this quilt.

After sorting through all the shirts I was able to determine which images to use and got to work. One shirt, a polo shirt, had only a breast pocket design. But this was an important shirt and had to be included in the finished product.

When I was about halfway done the quilt, my client asked if there were enough shirts/images left for me to make a pillow. The pillow would be a gift from her to her son’s boss. There were plenty of leftover shirts!