For My Father

I was blessed to have a wonderful father.  He has been gone four years now and I still miss him every day, especially on Father's Day.    A few years ago, I made a quilt for my mother using his flannel plaid shirts , and this past year I decided to make a quilt for myself using his cotton summer shirts.

Dad's favorite color was blue, and it was reflected in the clothing he chose.  I had 12 different summer plaid shirts to work with, and most of them were blue so they played together nicely.

The pattern I chose was called "Cool Summer Porch" by Eleanor Burns.  The title alone seemed to make it the perfect pattern choice.

To start, I deconstructed the shirts and ironed the pieces flat.

Each shirt sleeve yielded two squares of fabric which I then subcut on the diagonal.  I cut them all individually so that I could be sure to line up the plaids with the straight edge of the ruler.

One triangle was sewn to each side of a white strip of fabric:

The resulting quilt was supposed to look something like this, according to my Electric Quilt software:

In the end, I eliminated the horizontal and vertical white sashing because it competed visually with the lines in the plaids, and I rearranged the direction of the white stripe.

The final result is this:

Of the 12 shirts I used, I was able to find a photos of my Dad wearing 9 of them.  I will be adding a pocket to the back of the quilt with copies of the photos as a keepsake.

Happy Father's Day to all the dads.  💗