Watercress I

The Watercress is a wall-hanging sized quilt incorporating any number of shirts up to 12. This Watercress is composed of 9 blocks in a 3 by 3 grid. It was designed for a Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumnus. He played baseball at MIT and was a member of the Massachusetts-Iota Tau chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon. His shirts are mostly his MIT baseball shirts but you can see an SAE Christmas Party shirt in the center.

This client only had 8 shirts but didn’t want a 4 x 2 quilt. Luckily 2 shirts had mini motifs on the front that coordinated with larger designs on the back. I was able to incorporate the breast pocket designs by using plain sections of the other t-shirts. The result is the left block on the top row. The middle block on the bottom row was actually a child’s shirt so I added triangles and strips to size it up to the other blocks. The sashing fabric is a mostly purple and gold batik which represents the colors of SAE.

A little-known factoid about MIT’s athletes: The Tech mascot is the Beaver. Do you know why?

Because the Beaver is Nature’s Engineer.

“So we turned to Mr. Hornaday’s book on the animals of North America and instantly chose the beaver….The beaver not only typifies the Tech man, but its habits are peculiarly our own. Mr. Hornaday says, ‘Of all the animals in the world, the beaver is noted for its engineering and mechanical skills and habits of industry. His habits are nocturnal, he does his best work in the dark.’ “
—Lester Gardner, Class of 1897