Jan Remembered

This coming weekend is the National Firefighter Memorial ceremony in Colorado Springs. Jan, my sister-in-law will be added to the wall. To add to the special weekend, I worked hard to finish the memory quilt to bring and give my brother. Last Christmas when he came I asked him to bring me some of her fire fighter t-shirts and I would make a memory quilt. Something of hers he could wrap himself in and remember.

Being one of the world's best procrastinators I rarely finish anything early but, the quilt is done and ready to bring to Jim.

Working with t-shirts for quilts creates special problems. You need to stabilze the knit t-shirt material so it doesn't stretch out of shape and cause problems for the quilt.

 

All the t-shirts were different sized pictures so making standard blocks didn't work. I ended up making 16 - 18" blocked and pieced it 4x4. So it wouldn't be too busy, I decided on one background material and because Jim loves baseball and he and Jan would go to many games together - the background material is little baseballs. The border is bigger baseballs on a navy background to frame the main quilt.

 

All in all I think it turned out pretty good and hope Jim likes it when he sees it.

One of my "oh my" moments making this was a few days ago on Sept 11 while I was quilting it all together. I realized I was quilting the 9-11 t-shirts from when Jan went out to NY after 9-11 to help out and go to funerals. They had lost so many fire fighters that day and had so many funerals that fire departments around the country sent representatives out there to help honor the fallen at their funerals. And now Jan's name will be added to the wall that contains the names of these fallen heroes.