The recipient was not only a trumpeter for the marching bands both at Thomas Jeffersosn High School of Science and Technology and at the University of Virginia, he majored in music. TJHSST, referred interchangeably as either TJ or Jefferson, is a public magnet school that is currently ranked 14th in the nation. In his spare time during his US Presidential terms, Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia.
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When the recipient graduated from UVA back in 2016, he had cut up his shirts in different sized squares and hemmed them with gigantic stitches. He then glued them on a fleece blanket that had the Cavalier Marching Band logo machine-embroidered in the lower-right corner.
He was never pleased with the results so his mom contacted me to see if we could "fix it" for his birthday. She wanted to incorporate the blanket in its entirety. Neither mom or son had any idea what kind of glue had been used back then. I was really nervous that him being a TJ grad AND a guy that he had used Gorilla Glue or something even stronger. I did a test and discovered that it was a water-soluble adhesive. I soaked the blanket in a bathtub and found all the squares had become free and were floating independently. I then washed all the squares and the now plain blanket to get rid of any remaining stickiness.
He wanted a masculine sashing so he opted for a blue and white plaid with rust accents. Upon initial layout of the squares against the plaid, I could tell the design really needed a solid to both separate the busy plaid from some of the busier designs and to unify the square sizes. This Kona grey set off squares nicely.
The original blanket had curved corners so I machine-appliqued the entire blanket on top of the flannel. Usually you would add sashing by sewing the strips to the outer edge of the fleece. This is a great quilt for the winter as it has 4 layers, top, batting, fleece, and flannel.
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