Happy and sad!

Someone reached out to me not to long ago asking if I could make a shirt quilt for them. After meeting up I found out the story behind the shirts.

She was raised by her grandfather and these were his short sleeve button downs that he wore every single day.

After seeing all of the shirts I thought a good way of using all of the plaids would be to to create a hybrid version of Denyse Schmidt’s Hop, Skip and Jump design from her book. I actually made this very quilt design as one of my first few quilts.

To make my life easier I made myself a set of acrylic templates. So I started cutting! And cutting and cutting some more. Each block has 8 curved rectangles, alternating between the shirts and the neutral backgrounds.

After a day or so I had enough of the blocks pieces that I took them all downstairs and placed them on the floor to check layout. Once they were shuffled around a bit I started to join my rows and then add all of the rows together.

This morning I took the finished top and and backing to my friend Cathy who always fits me into her busy longarm schedule. I wanted her to have it while I was away this week in Myrtle Beach.

I’ll pick it up on Friday and get the binding on. I sent a picture to the my client the other day and she said it made her so happy to see it and that she can’t wait to sit under it and have a good cry. See, Happy and Sad!