Most of you probably don’t run in as many races as I do (last three years’ average is 40 per year!), but you may have started getting a bit inundated with race T-shirts. Before I started running, my sister used to give me her old T-shirts, but I always felt that I should earn the shirt by having completed the race! And this created a bit of a problem, because I would not give away a shirt unless the person had run the race, in which case they probably had their own shirt!
My mother finally came on a solution – a quilt! Actually, this solution was not for me particularly, but more for my sister, who not only gets shirts from doing races, but wins technical clothing and shoes at races, and so rarely, if ever, wears her shirts. Trust me, you can only use so many rags!
The amount of squares needed to cover a queen-size bed was 56 (8 by 7), and if I wanted two-sided, it would have to be 112. Needless to say, this is a lot of shirts (though sometimes the backs are OK, too!). Throughout 2001, I would bring home small piles of shirts that I would NEVER wear or would like in my quilt, but I did not expect to get the quilt any time soon.
My mother completed the quilt so quickly that my doctor sister had to prescribe painkillers to thwart pain caused by sewing through batten and 8 layers of material (4 shirt edges sewn together on each side). I present to you my 2001 Christmas present!