T-shirts for Shauri

 A few weeks ago, I was out on a bike ride with my brother when my phone rang.  I knew that I would never be able to get it out and answered before it went to voice mail, so I didn't even try.  When we stopped for a snack break, I listened to this distraught woman telling me that she wanted to make a quilt out her daughter's t-shirts, but was overwhelmed at the prospect.  So here we are, outside the Whiskey River Store (I have no idea how to get there, but we go past it often on bike rides outside of Canby), and I am trying to tell Shauri how to prep her shirts to get them ready for me, and make an appt. to meet up.  A few days later, Shauri arrived at my studio with a bag of shirts that had been cut to size and mostly fused to the interfacing to make them stable or piecing and quilting.  You can tell that she is much relieved to pass this project off to me, but still somewhat anxious about how it's really going to work.
We had many different sizes of shirts to work with but they all had to finish at 15" because of the sushi restaurant shirt.  Got to have the city where it's from, that's where her daughter went to college.  Shauri went off to get some extra fabric to add to build up the blocks as needed, also sashing strips and backing fabric.  We did a sample layout, but she told me "I trust you." to make it work.  After I had all the shirts built out to size, I sent her a photo from my phone, but she couldn't really see it well because of the angle.  I use my guest room bed as my "design wall", and can't suspend myself from the ceiling to get a good shot of the quilts when they are on the bed.  Thankfully, Shauri was able to come and preview the quilt top and gave her approval for my layout.  Great because I'm excited to get this going further for her.
So now it is finished and ready for her to pick up, wrap and place under the tree.  Since her daughter gave her the shirts, it's not really a surprise, but I still think that she'll be surprised and pleased to have those memories to wrap up in.