Friday, May 18, 2012

Blogger's Quilt Fest

Amy, at Amy's Creative Side, is hosting an online quilt festival.

Amy's Creative Side

Quilters submit quilts they have made - virtually!

I want to enter this Festival with my Gymnastics T-Shirt Quilt.


This quilt is a collection of T-Shirts from my second daughter 
- who was a gymnast until her teen years.  
She grew tall and participating in gymnastics began to stress and injure her back.

Then she became a coach.

Notice the black patch below: 



Notice, also, that I used some of her leotards in the quilt.
With a little bit of hand-quilting...



I machine quilted around all the lattice work.
Then did some custom quilting on each quilt.
With my walking foot.


















My daughter is quite fond of rainbows -
and you can see the rainbow-dot fabric I used between the shirts.




The t-shirt above is one she wore at least once a week for a year or two!!  

From her background in gymnastics, my daughter went into spring-board diving,  Even diving in college.  I had this quilt top finished by the 2008 Summer Olympics.  By then she could not longer do gymnastics.  She also soon had to quit diving because she had acquired a chronic illness.  She did not even enjoy watching the Olympics that year. I put the quilt top away for awhile.

This year she asked me when I might finish her quilt - and I pulled it out of the closet and finished it!  

She had attended a gymnastics camp hosted by the legendary coach Bela Karolyi.  He autographed her t-shirt and it holds a position on the quilt.


The back of the quilt is this lovely black background with rainbow dot all-over print.


 She continues to struggle with her chronic illness - so Karolyi's catch-phrase
"YOO KAN DOO EAT"  
(With a thick Romanian/Hungarian accent)
graces the back of her quilt.
CathyH

6 comments:

  1. Fun memory quilt for your daughter. I LOVE the addition of her leotards...so clever. :)

    Happy Quilt Festival.

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  2. What a special quilt. Your daughter will cherish it even more as time goes by. Thank you for sharing it.

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  3. I was a gymnast too, way back when (gasp, the 70' and 80s!)

    Fun quilt

    Check out my blog if you can...

    Margaret Gunn
    www.quiltsoflove.blogspot.com

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  4. Precious remembrance quilt for your daughter. Fun to see it. Thanks for sharing and have a great day

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  5. What a beautiful, sentimental quilt you have made. I am so glad your daughter finally wanted you to finish the quilt. It is such a wonderful keepsake. I hope she tackles her illness.

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