Some of you may know that this year I made this thing called a t-shirt quilt. I’ve been meaning to do it for a while, almost 15 years in fact, but when I moved back in with my parents last fall I decided it was time to finally make it happen. It took a solid 6 months of working weekends and putting in whatever time I could after work (though I’ll definitely admit that there were weeks when I did little more than rearrange squares for hours on end), but the finished product was more than worth it. Now I have a beautiful quilt that contains hundreds of memories from my pre-college life and even more pride for finishing it in my current life. I love that when I look at it I see my friends and family and who I was back then, the collection of basketball shirts next to theatre ones bringing out my total self instead of just partial versions.
This whole thing started when I outgrew one of my favorite t-shirts and couldn’t bear to give it away. It’s an awesome design, three effortlessly cool cartoon skier girls ready to prove they’re just as fast as the boys, and when I put it on one of my stuffed animals for safe keeping it wasn’t long before I’d covered it with a few more, deciding then that I’d make a quilt someday. When I started the official collection this fall I went through my parents’ entire house, claiming their shirts as well as my own, even calling up my old elementary schools to see if they had any old gear lying around. For the smaller squares around the border I cut up everything from baseball caps to socks, using Halloween costumes, pj pants, shorts, jerseys, pillowcases, sweatshirts, blankets, sweatbands, slippers and even my high school letter to showcase my life before I turned 19.
I know that without this quilt I would have long since forgotten most of these things (which wouldn’t have been the end of the world), but I also know that looking at this quilt makes me smile, facilitating an easy pride in who I’ve been and who I’ve become. That alone is worth way more than 6 months of work.
Finding the right fabric to cover the back of my quilt was much more difficult than I’d expected and it was only after hours of wandering stores and trolling the internet that I got a hold of the two pieces that fit my pre-college self perfectly. The blue mountain range fabric I found on Spoonflower was too expensive to cover my entire larger-than-king-size quilt, but I splurged on it anyway, deciding it would be great as an accent strip.
After a few more weeks of searching stores and the internet for a complementary pattern without any luck, I stopped by a fabric store on the way home from work, absolutely determined to walk out with something. Anything. Two hours later I had resigned to defeat, holding a boring, beige pattern that ‘would do’ as I walked up to the counter.
Just as I was about to check out I spotted the perfect print that was exactly me in every way, pulling it out and knowing it was right before my brain could really comprehend. The light yellow was the color of my childhood room (and personality) and the subtle snowflakes reminded me of Utah and building snow forts in our yard. It was soft and light and odd and beautiful, somehow finding a balance between winter and summer without making you really think of either. It was perfect. It was me.
When I saw it was on clearance and especially cheap I was thrilled, I could buy as much as I wanted! It wasn’t until I took it to the counter and found out that the bolt was just short of what I’d need that we started calling the other stores in the area to see what we could do. It was a seasonal pattern so no one on the west coast had any left, except for (miraculously!) a store only a half hour away. We waited on the phone while they looked for it, hearing 15 minutes later that they couldn’t find it but I was welcome to come help them look. I took a chance buying what I’d found and headed off to spend my Friday night combing through another store, I’d find it, I knew.
Over an hour of searching later I’d given up again, telling the employees who’d helped me look thanks for trying. I was on my way to the door when again I spotted it just as I’d given up. It was exactly where it should have been, exactly where all of us had looked a hundred times. I shouted and my new friends ran over to celebrate with me and we jumped and danced around the almost empty store. I knew then that it would become one of the pivotal moments in my life, a reminder that settling for ‘good enough’ wasn’t something acceptable. I would have missed that wonderful celebration and spent countless hours on a quilt that I’d always have wondered what if. Now every time I look at my quilt I get to smile and know to Never Settle. True happiness and perfection and love exists if you’re willing to work to find it. (p.s. a week later a store on the east coast found some more of my perfect fabric and shipped it to me. Any ideas on what else can I make with it?)
Out of all the hours I used it, the sewing machine only officially broke once (my mother helped troubleshoot hundreds of other times – it was her machine she bought in high school after all) and I swear the little old man whose shop we took it to knew what the problem was before he even opened the lid. I’d never really sewn before starting this adventure, so his shop and my mother were definitely life savers every time I bent a part, snagged a thread or ran out of supplies.
After collecting 70+ items of clothing over 15 years, 54 big squares, 48 little rectangles, 15 yards of backing, 12 yards of fabric, 6 months, 5 pockets, 4 cutting blades, 3 colors of thread, 2 needles, 1 king size batting, 1 trip to the sewing machine doctor and a ridiculous amount of time planning, Google searching, cutting, sewing, threading, and ironing finishing the quilt was unreal. It was done and it was all I could do to cut the final few hanging threads.
Second place at the county fair!
When a friend’s mom suggested I enter the Summit County Fair I knew I had nothing to lose, so it was even more awesome when I ended up winning $3 and a Second Place ribbon. They even hung my quilt from the rafters and I told a few of the admiring little old ladies a few tips when they asked. With that success I got ambitious and entered the State Fair just this week, rightfully winning no more than a participation ribbon since the quilts there were out of this world perfect. But it was still worth it because I got discount tickets out of the deal and made a night out of wandering the exhibits with my family. State and County Fairs are really wonderful places – there is nary a phone in sight and people are just there to have a great time with the people they love. The animal parts of it are pretty great too really, though on more than one occasion I saw a 10 year old run to her mother’s arms after auctioning off her favorite goat. One boy even proudly told us that he’d named his pig Mr. Bacon as another hugged his goodbye.
So now that the quilt is done and the fairs are over, you ask, now what? No idea. Ideally I’ll find some way to wash it, but after that it’s probably getting folded up and put in a bag, saved for the day when I have a house of my own to fill. I’ll take it out whenever a friend comes to visit or I’m feeling nostalgic, but mostly it will sit in a closet, holding the memories and feelings of my youth so my conscious mind doesn’t have to.
I like that I don’t have to cling to those cherished memories so tightly anymore, because I know all I have to do is look at that quilt to be reminded. And that is what saving memories is all about right? We find ways to keep our favorite things safe so we can focus on making more.
Is it bad that I’m kind of ready to start my college one?