Patti's T-Shirt Quilts

Another long term WIP is off of my list.
Several years ago, while we lived in Austin, Texas, my son took gymnastics classes from a wonderful woman.  I offered to make a t-shirt quilt for her as a token of my appreciation.  I had not made a t-shirt quilt before.  She gave me two boxes, with maybe 75-100 t-shirts.  I got her to pare the stack down to 50.
I did not go crazy with design.  I cut out 14 1/2″ squares, using a lightweight woven fusible to back them.  I was planning to do a 5×5 layout front and back.  After getting the front together, I realized that backing a t-shirt quilt with more t-shirts would just be too heavy, and very hard to quilt with my Bernina.  I folded everything up, and put it into the closet.  I’ve thought about it over the years, and I finally got my sewjo together and pulled it out.
Patti is a lifelong gymnast, and has an amazing collection of t-shirts.  She is a native Texan, so the backing used up some Texas fabric I bought when I lived there.  The wild bluebonnets are amazing in the springtime.
I decided against doing t-shirts on the back – it would be too complicated and too heavy.  Of course, the backing fabrics were too small.  Despite my resolve, there are 5 t-shirts pieced into the back.  The batting is cotton.
I used a pantograph called Raindrops by Lisa Calle to quilt it.  I’m very happy with how it turned out, especially now that it is finished.
This is the first quilt I have attached my new labels to.  Aren’t they slick?  They were custom printed by Tagtopia, on Etsy.
I had 20 shirts left, along with 8 smaller pieces after finishing the main quilt.  I put them together into a smaller throw.  I backed it with a super soft plushy fabric – like minky on steroids.  The quilting shows up wonderfully against the plush texture.