T-shirt quilt for a high school grad *** March 2008

Last fall I was asked to make a T-shirt quilt for a friend's daughter for her upcoming high school graduation in May 2008.  In previous years I had made a T-shirt quilt for Lib's brother and for 3 other boys that she knew quite well.  All of these kids were from the same high school and they were all interested in music so that meant the all quilts, even though different, had the same black/gold school colors on the front and music as part of their theme.  So, I was looking forward to making a quilt for a girl--something that wasn't black and gold.....

Although the boys were very pleased with their T-shirt quilts (they all knew they were getting a quilt except for the very first grad who got his as a surprise), none of them cared about being included in the fabric selection -- that was left up to the moms and me.  Lib had definite ideas about colors she liked and which particular shirts she wanted included in her quilt.  By this time, she'd seen the 4 other T-shirt quilts made by me and although each was different there were many similarities so she had some idea of what she liked.  

First of all, her favorite color is purple.  That choice is reflected in some of her favorite shirts that ranged from lavender to a darker purple; she chose a deep purple batik fabric to be her background sashing that would frame the blocks.  Also she selected a mottled green to dark blue/purple batik fabric with a small swirled dot pattern for the outer border.  The green picked up the bright limey greens that were in 3 of the T-shirt blocks and made a nice contrast with the dark purple sashing.

I added upper and lower borders of a contrasting color to a few of the narrower shirt pieces to make them fit the almost-square 12 x 12.5" size of the block and I combined the front and back designs on a few shirts to make a more complete block.  On a few blocks I added some fabric pieces to make the design more fun such as including a section of "piano key" fabric to the Mozart block and a strip of black polka dotted yellow fabric to the bottom edge of a lavender shirt that had a row of quirky tea cups.  I also added a small outline border to a couple of the darker blocks in order to set them off so that they wouldn't blend too much into the dark purple sashing.

I hope the final quilt reflects Lib's interests in music, travels to France, and playing tennis.