Dress Shirt Quilt

So, I've been wanting to make this post for a long long time, but I thought I "lost" the photographs on my computer. In an effort to be more organized with my digital pictures, I started putting all my quilt photos in a folder called "Quilts." (Clever, I know!) But then I forgot I had started doing that so I was searching and searching around by date, trying to find these particular shots. Finally, they resurfaced!!

When my parents were cleaning out my grandmother's house, they found a quilt top. My mom had no idea the story behind it, but she kept it to give to me. My grandmother always told us stories about important things in her house ("This vase was a wedding present." "This silver spoon belonged to your great-grandmother.") so I was shocked that we had never heard a word of this quilt, even though I had been a quilter for years, and my grandmother used to brag to her friends about her quilting granddaughter! Anyway, the quilt top was very cool because it was made out of what appears to be men's dress shirts! So I wonder, was this quilt made of my grandfather's dress shirts? Or had it belonged to one of my great aunts? Or did my grandmother pick it up at a yard sale? (All plausible theories)

This was the "easiest" quilt I've done because the hard part (which is also the fun part) -- cutting and sewing the fabric for the top -- was already done. All I had to do was get binding and a backing and put it together. I decided not to put on any borders because there was no way I would be able to find fabrics similar to these old dress shirts. Plus, the quilt was already queen-sized, without borders, so I didn't want to make it any bigger (I only have a limited amount of space on my living floor to spread out my work!). Here it is being displayed on my bed. Because it looks so good on my bed, I didn't want to give it away, but I had planned from the start to give it to my brother!