Family Quilt/Family Reunion Shirts

A couple of family members proposed making a family quilt to display at reunions and other family events, especially weddings. The material for the individual quilt squares was bought and brought to the family reunion in Custer State Park. We had a large meeting hall there and conducted a workshop to design our squares. Each family member was asked to make sure their full name, birthdate and wedding date was included on their squares. Other than that they were encouraged to put anything on their squares that would represent their hobbies, jobs, personalities etc. Some members used iron on tranfers, some were artistic enough to draw free hand designs, some used a light box to trace patterns on their squares and some had them embroidered. When putting the quilt together, we put our Mom and Pop in the center of the quilt. Then starting with the oldest child and their family members, we proceeded down the quilt to the bottom where the youngest of nine was located with their family. The quilt is king size and has 104 total squares with some that are still blank but will not be when our new members are added. We will need to start a new quilt very soon because we are adding members at an alarming rate. The quilt is displayed on a HUGE quilt rack designed and built by Uncle Dennis. The quilt is supposed to be shared during the year by each sibling for a year at a time but some of the siblings are afraid to have that responsibility and allow a couple of the members to take care of it through the years. This quilt is meant to be a living history of our family and we hope it will be continued with the following generations.

The family reunion committee members are in charge of ordering shirts every year for our reunions. We have had tee shirts and denim shirts and I know several members who have every shirt that was made for our reunions. Each year has a differnt design or theme on the shirt along with the family name and year. We will include some pictures. We usually get a group discount for the shirts which makes it very affordable. We have had many people stop us to ask about our family when they see all of us in our shirts. One year we even had baseball caps that were bright orange with a BIG "G" on the front of the cap. It is a lot of fun to arrive at reunion to see what our shirts will look like.