When Christina Crabtree opened the large present last Christmas at her parents' home in Tyrone, she found a blanket.

Nice gift and all, considering it's a common offering to a college student. Then, she took a closer look.

Renee' Hannans Henry/AJC (ENLARGE)

Diane Shagott, of Suwanee, created this quilt featuring nine Peachtree t-shirts.

Christian Crabtree/Handout (ENLARGE)

Christian Crabtree, a Georgia State student, displays a quilt made from Peachtree t-shirts of her late grandfather, William Bowen.

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"I spread it out and saw all the T-shirts," the 22-year-old Georgia State journalism major said. "I cried. Everybody cried."

Crabtree unfurled a quilt that had been made of Peachtree Road Race T-shirts worn by her late grandfather, William Bowen —"Papa Billy," she called him— a longtime Peachtree runner who died in 2006 at the age of 69. Bowen had run in about 17 Peachtrees and had passed on his love of the race to family members, she said.

"It was absolutely the most favorite gift I have ever received," said Crabtree, who uses the quilt as a throw blanket on her bed in her Atlanta apartment. "Every time I put it on my bed, I think about him."

Many of the 55,000 runners in Friday's 39th Atlanta Journal-Constitution Peachtree Road Race will have T-shirts on their minds during the 6.2-mile run from Lenox Square into Midtown. The shirt's design and fabric color is secret until the finish line, after which participants treat their shirts as works of art, rewards for a job well done and memories of family traditions.

Some end up on quilts, a growing trend that has become a new way for them to celebrate the popular race.

"The T-shirts are just so great to earn. Each one is so unique every year," said Diane Shagott, 49, of Suwanee, a veteran of "15 or 16" Peachtrees, who made her own quilt with nine of her shirts. "I saw a quilt and decided I wanted to do it.

"I can sew, but I never did a quilt before, so it was interesting."

Shagott, a runner since her school days, set off the T-shirts on black fabric covered with three-inch-round orange peaches that she found after months of searching on the Internet.

"I thought the fabric was really cool," she said. "But I had to cut the shirts [to make squares for the quilt]. That was hard. I had a pretty shaky hand when I started cutting."

Patsy Howard will do the cutting for those with unsteady hands. The Snellville resident has made more than 500 T-shirt quilts, many of which are Peachtree-themed, since starting PSH Quilts as a home-based business a decade ago. She estimates that she has made upwards of 100 Peachtree quilts, including one in 1998 for Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank that also had some Home Depot squares.

"That was before I even knew who Arthur Blank was," she said.

It takes Howard about a week to finish a quilt, but her waiting list runs eight to 10 weeks. Prices range from $180 to $900, depending on size of blanket and sizes of the T-shirt squares. Her Web site includes several pictures of her Peachtree work.

"It's fun to be part of these," she said. "Since you have to earn the T-shirt, people are more possessive of them."

Crabtree's gift was a surprise from her grandmother. The college student, who will run her second Peachtree this year, asked for the shirts after Papa Billy's death and intended to make a quilt to give to her grandmother. She never got around to it, but mother Gwen and grandmother Mary Lewis Bowen pulled the shirts out of Crabtree's bedroom closet and had the quilt made.

Barbara Wolfson also was secretive in her plans to make her husband Michael a quilt for his 50th birthday 17 years ago. The Sandy Springs couple, originally from South Africa, have participated in most of the Peachtrees since 1978, Michael's first.

Barbara wanted to make a quilt out of her husband's first 14 shirts.

She had two obstacles. First, one of the shirts (from 1979) was missing. But with the help of former Olympian and Peachtree's first winner Jeff Galloway —she knew someone who worked with Galloway— she got a replacement. Secondly, Michael, now 67, frequently wore the T-shirts and to have the quilt be a surprise, she borrowed shirts from running friends and stuck them in her husband's dresser. He never knew what was coming.

"He was dumbstruck, speechless," Barbara Wolfson said of moment her husband received the quilt. "We think it's a wonderful momento."

Crabtree, Shagott and the Wolfsons all will line up again for this year's Peachtree and earn another coveted T-shirt. The shirts will always be special to them.

"Running the Peachtree is pretty much a big part of our life," Barbara Wolfson said. "That T-shirt, you earned it and it's a gift to yourself. It becomes a special part of you."