Can't believe it has been 15 years!

Fifteen years ago Joe and I headed to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon.  Everyone thought we were just heading out for our yearly after school vacation.  However, Joe had proposed to  me about three weeks earlier and he already  made plans for us to go to Las Vegas.  I  know you probably think that was weird, but we had been together 7 years and had always said that we would just go to Vegas and get married.  I did get to pick the chapel, I picked the Little Chapel of the West.  (it is the chapel at the end of the movie Viva Las Vegas were Ann Margaret and Elvis get married).  It is very small and old fashioned looking.  We got to Vegas on Saturday with an appointment to get married at 10:00 on Sunday morning.  Sunday morning we were picked up at 9:00 by Fred the limo driver and taken to the Clarke County Courthouse where we filled out our marriage license with golf pencils.  From there we went to the chapel, I have no idea the ministers name, but I did remember the limo drivers name!  The limo driver and the organist were our witnesses, and the ceremony was over in about 10 minutes.  We went back to the Luxor and called my parents, they were so happy we were no longer living in sin, Joe's mom cried that she had missed our wedding.  For us it was the perfect wedding!!  We stayed in Vegas a couple of days, then headed to the Grand Canyon and Jerome.  This was the beginning of our "out west" vacations.

 I decided to make Joe a T-shirt quilt using all of the t-shirts from our vacations.  This is the first t-shirt quilt I have made, they are not as easy as you  might think to make.  The hardest part is deciding on the fabric for the background, borders, and sashing. I decided to use batiks, the background is a brown southwestern design with the borders brown and a greyish green leaf print.   The backing and bindings are also batiks, I found them last week at Country Stitches in Blue Ridge.   First you have to cut out the design, then use a fusible backing to stabilize the knit.  After stabilizing you sew the sashing on, then comes the fun part---deciding on the layout.  Becky has made several t-shirt quilts so I decided to take it to the cabin and have her help me lay it out.  One thing I did not take was my new best friend, 505.  I don't think you could make a t-shirt quilt with out this.

My  new best friend.

 Without 505 all I could do was pin the t-shirts down.  We used lots of pins I didn't want to have to figure out this layout again.

After coming home I replaced the pins with the adhesive spray and zigzagged around each piece.  The quilt top is all finished, I even had enough fabric left to make a pillowcase to store it in.  Unfortunately, I will have to give it to him unquilted.  Lisa, the best quilter in the world, has a broken hand and can't quilt it yet.  I thought at first Joe was going to be really surprised, but now I think that he might have an idea of what he is getting. Hope he likes it!