LORNE, N.S –
All those classic rock band t-shirts she’d worn over the years were stuffed in bags, shoved under her bed.
That’s when Jillian Martin decided that she would get creative and turn those old shirts into a quilt, something that any classic rock fan would feel much respect for.
“Some of them were mine, but a lot of them were my dad’s,” says the 20-year-old, who grew up in Lorne.
“They just accumulated and I had too many to wear, so I tried to think of a way that I could put another use to them.”
She started piecing together her work of art in the summer of 2018. One minor problem: she’d never done any quilting before. Undaunted, she went to work.
“It wasn’t very planned; it was spontaneous,” says Martin.
“I just cut them all up, l sewed them together and hoped for the best.”
Many of the classic rock acts are on the quilt: among others, she has the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin (her favourite of the bunch), Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and Elvis.
Martin, who works during the summer at Michelin and is a psychology student at Acadia University, grew up listening to her dad’s music collection – that’s how she got her old-school taste in 60s and 70s music, when rock stars were real rock stars – mysterious, god-like, and not pimping themselves out on reality TV or social media.
She said the quilt is “durable enough to use a blanket,” and it is not for sale.
“I don’t think I’d sell it,” she says, “it just means a lot to me.”
