Shirt quilt challenge

There's nothing like a good shirt challenge to pull me out of my unofficial blog break...farm, family and all the rest has kept my head down and tail up for the last little while - oh and a couple of quilts that needed finishing ... but more about those in another post :-) {Apologies to those of you I haven't visited lately, I have some catch up reading to do.}

Last year Tracee of Farmgate Creations invited us to join her (in a cyberly way) in the shirt quilt challenge her quilt group was doing. Her group shared a bunch of shirts so they all had the same fabric but us on-line challengees were able to do it our own way.
It took me a while to decide what to do. One day though the penny dropped - I had a stack of Dad's old farm shirts in my wardrobe and we had our first grandbabies on the way.

Aha!!!

Out came Dad's shirts, and a couple of hubby's old shirts as well.
Yes, Dad's were well worn, collars turned and mended
and cuffs frayed but I couldn't bear to get rid of them!

These shirts made their first appearance on my blog way back in early 2014 when I used them on my Pop Monkeys. (More about them *here*).

Unpicking released some interesting debris... goodness knows how long this
hay has been hiding in the pocket!

I decided a heart block would be perfect for a baby quilt.

I had quite a challenge working around all the worn pieces and the warped plaids after years of wear and washing. I really couldn't get it any bigger as I was running out of decent fabric!

Completion :-)

Simple piecing, flannel on the back and simple quilting.

And simple binding too; all machine sewn, the first time I've done it this way.

My idea with this wee quilt is that it will do the rounds of what would have been Dad's great grandchildren, as each one arrives it will move house.
The first babies have christened it, these photos were taken in September when I visited. The girls have grown a bit since then.

Thank you to Tracee for inspiring me to make this quilt. Tracee has photos on her blog from her quilt group's challenge and also a link up for the blogger challengees. They are over several posts so just scroll through to see them all - it's neat to see what others have done.

Thank you for visiting, 

till next time,

♥