T-Shirt Quilts Rock!

I should say my sister-in-law rocks! She does! She offered to make this t-shirt quilt for me and shipped it to me in the mail last week. It is awesome! I'm so in love with how it turned out.

The upper left hand shirt is a staff shirt from when I worked at Littlejohn Elementary back in DeKalb, Illinois (so many happy memories but no real place to wear the shirt anymore). The middle top shirt is from the camp where we attend CBLI every summer. The shirt to the right of that was from a year when the CBLI kids' track focused on a construction theme and so the front of the shirt said "God at Work" and the back said "Person in Progress" (seen in the second half of the quilt). The grey shirt from the middle left is another CBLI kids' track t-shirt, followed by two more from Littlejohn (they used to have each class make a shirt and the kids would draw their self-portraits - I always loved those shirts). Finally, on the bottom right, is a shirt from my husbands's days as 1st chair cornet in Illinois Summer Youth Music. Then, another CBLI t-shirt followed by John's HS pep band shirt.

The second half of the quilt has the survivor shirt we received when we went to the celebration for my niece Amelia's completion of treatment for and defeat of cancer. This shirt belonged to the little boys but they have since outgrown it. The second half of the shirt, bearing the message "Our Family Soared on His Wings" is on the other side of a Littlejohn Harambe group shirt. Plus, you can just make out another Camp Wonderland logo underneath that message. In the second row, Bryce's fourth grade t-shirt is followed by another CBLI shirt (framing a Northern Illinois Music Camp t-shirt from way back in 1982), and the back side of hubby's ISYM t-shirt. On the bottom row, we have the back of the CBLI Basic Training shirt, the CBLI construction shirt, and Bryce's first grade Littlejohn shirt, with another self-portrait.

Moreover, I loved the background fabric she chose for the back side of the quilt. The middle has a section of musical notes flanked by two sides of a blue plaid pattern.

I am in love with this quilt. Now I need to think of some way to repay her kindness, since she will not let me pay her even for the time and materials required (no doubt this took a hefty amount of time to pull together and skills I couldn't even dream of possessing).