A quilt for my brother

I have 2 wonderful brothers. I love them them both. My brother Aaron has had a love affair with hockey from the time he was a little kid. We lived in a heritage home where the basement wasn't finished. So this was a perfect place for Aaron to practise his shots. He spent hours down there picking the perfect spot for his next game winner. I'm sure my parents were the only ones who ever had puck marks all over their furnace.

Aaron played for a lot of teams. And I think he could have made it to the NHL. He was and still is an awesome player. To this day, he still plays hockey throughout the winter and he makes a home ice rink for his kids. But I think he likes it best!

 I wanted to make a quilt for him that depicted his love of hockey. He is almost 50 years old and still has a lot of his jerseys.  So one day I asked his if I could have them.  He reluctantly handed me a garbage bag full of his jerseys. He also included a few softball jerseys just in case I didn't have enough. He said take good care of them.  I told him I would make him something special out of them.

Well my way of taking care of them was to cut them apart. As I did so, I was so worried that my brother would be in tears if he saw what I was doing.  I carefully fused each jersey front and back to a fusible interfacing then cut out quilt squares. Some of the jerseys were not in great shape so some I mended and some I used only the best parts. Then I added a border to each block and some sashing   I finished the quilt off with a wide border. On this border (with the help of my Accuquilt studio) I added his name and the words "He shoots, He Scores" and some maple leaves . The quilt is now waiting its turn to be quilted.

My brother and his family were out at Thanksgiving. Aaron has been dying to see what I have been up to. I didn't want to show it to him until it was completed but he caught me at a weak moment and I gave in. I took him in to my quilting studio and opened up the completed top. My brother doesn't get choked up very easily but he got tears and gave me the biggest hug ever. He can hard wait to take it home and to show his hockey buddies what his big sister made him

Here are a few pictures. The quilt is quite large and I don't have a place large enough to lay it flat for photographing so I can only show parts of it.