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War is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the very many.

~General Smedley Butler

The next {and largest} of the shirt quilts is finished. It's earmarked for my youngest. 

Most of the fabrics are also in the previous quilts: here, here, and here. 

Larger Blue Cross Quilt

This quilt was a good place to practice different free motion quilting designs. I've sewn all of them, just not recently. And it shows. However, a good wash shrunk and puffed the batting enough to hide many shortcomings. 

Quilting Detail

The back is the ...

Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it. 

~Aubrey de Graf

I subcut the next set of 4.5" strips into 8.5" rectangles. There are also lots of 2.5" squares leftover from the first top. I didn't want to make triangles again so decided to make small four-patches. 

The shirt rectangles are sewn around it with a partial seam for the first side. Very easy to do. I've used that method on several quilts including Flying Squares and the outer border of a Melon Patch. It's ...

Kind words cost little but they accomplish much.

~Blaise Pascal

If you know me, you know there are still lots of strips cut. Way too many. After deboning the shirts and cutting some into smaller pieces than were easy to use, I sliced the rest into 4.5" strips. When the previous top worked out, I went looking for another idea with easy {larger} pieces. There's a pattern from 1942 called A Red and White Crisscross that looks like an X that I simplified. First, this X is made of two squares and a rectangle. Second, it's ...

A pessimist, they say, sees a glass as being half empty; an optimist sees the same glass as half full. But a giving person sees a glass of water and starts looking for someone who might be thirsty.

~G. Donald Gale

I started my blue and white shirt quilt saga years ago before DH himself retired. Whenever he retired a shirt, I checked it over and kept it if it was in good shape. I soon realized they are almost all blue or white. All solids or very calm prints. Recently more came from my sons and a few ...