The Greatest Quilt Ever Made!

I have to say that Mrs Wildcat11 and Mother Wildcat11 teamed up to put together one of the coolest gifts that a Wildcat fanatic could ever get.....a Linfield Wildcat Quilt. This quilt actually serves two purposes; the first is to keep Wildcat11 warm during those cold Pacific Northwest Nights and the other is to rid the 11's of the glut of old Wildcat/Linfield/Theta Chi shirts that have been clogging up the 11's drawers for years.

Yeah, I'm reluctant to throw away any T-Shirt that has to do with Linfield. Seriously, I have a ton of old, beat up, and down right blown out shirts that I refuse to let go. Why else would I still be hanging onto this Linfield football camp shirt featuring former Wildcat QB Curt Musser (circa 2000). I just can't let go of these fine pieces of art and can you really blame me? If I dig deep enough in our drawers I swear that I still have my first Linfield football shirt (1994) that you get at the start of each fall camp. If I could still fit into it, I would probably bust it into the rotation.

Mrs 11 first brought up the topic of a turning my old shirts into a quilt about three years ago when we sold our first house. We were moving just outside of McMinnville and it just seemed that we were packing box after box of old Linfield shirts. Most were unwearable in public (I would wear them in public but I don't want to embarrass Mrs 11) because of either holes in the arm pits, dried paint, food stains, or they are just so thread-worn but each time Mrs. 11 asked if she could chuck one of these pieces of history or turn them into a dust rag I would think about it for about 1/2 second, drop my head in shame and say that I would like to keep it. Mrs 11, being the wonderful wife that she is, would always be fine with my desire to keep my beat up Linfield swag but she had every right to give me a hard time if she wanted to. Now Mrs.11 has some old Linfield hoops shirts from her basketball days but this is only a small fraction compared to the mountain of 'Cats swag piled away in various closets in our house.

During this past year's football camp I picked up a couple of shirts and when I went to try to squeeze them into our draws I just had a moment of clarity and knew it was time to start thinning out the herd of shirts. So Mrs.11 and Mother11 got together a few times this past fall started the process of picking out old football shirts, old fraternity shirts, and some of Mrs11 hoops shirts to piece together.

Pretty much every home football game Mrs11 and Mother11 would hang out in the house, listen to the golden tones of Dave Hansen and Tyler Mathews call the Linfield games, and carefully piece together the Mona Lisa of Wildcat fan fair. Now this was a complicated affair because we first had to have a "sorting party" where we piled up all of the shirts and started to pick out the shirts that I wanted in the quilt and what I wanted to keep whole. This was painfully hard for WC11....it would be the equivalent of asking me who is my all-time favorite Linfield team. Choosing between these shirts was my Sophie's choice.

Once we picked out all the shirts they started to get to work and at the end of the day they compiled so many fabric squares they have enough material for a 2nd quilt but I would feel greedy at this point to ask them to sew together a 2nd quilt. Bottom line this is truly a great gift...one that comes from the heart and I can't thank Mrs.11 and Mother11 enough for the thought that went into this.