Gran's Surprise Quilt

I've been frantically crafting for the past few weeks.  Several projects have been kept secret.  Unless you know me in real life, in which case you're sick of hearing about them, sorry.  There was a very good reason for this.  Yesterday was my Gran's 90th birthday!  Happy birthday Gran!  What do you get as a present for someone who is 90?  After racking my brain I came up with an idea.  A memory quilt.  Or in this case, more of a family quilt.  That is, a quilt with photos of the family on it.

Remember this fabric roll up?

Well this is the project it was bought for.  I had a vague idea that I wanted some kind of shading across the quilt and this fabric seemed to fit the bill.  And it's really pretty!  I particularly like the greeny-turquoisey colours.  I have to say, I was a bit daunted by making a quilt from strips of fabric like this.  I like to draw things out first, however badly, and I wasn't going to be able to do that with this project.  I also had no idea how big the final quilt was going to be, or even how big it should be.

First thing I did was lay all the strips out across the dining room table, trying to put them in some kind of order.

The terracotta type colours all had two strips the same.  There were some repeats in the others, but only the odd one.  I took out the other duplicates and one or two other strips to get eight strips of each of the four colours (cream, green, terracotta and brown).  I then sewed these strips into groups, from the lightest of each colour together, through to the darkest shades.

These were then cut into square blocks, each approximately 8 1/2".  All except one.  Which I managed to cut half an inch too small.  In the photos of the final quilt try to spot which one.  It's a game the whole family can enjoy.

I then had to decide how to arrange the blocks in the final quilt.  We had a couple of options.

To be honest, in my head I'd always pictured the first option, and that's the one I went for.

Once the blocks were sewn together I had to decide on the placement of photos.  Getting the photos together in the first place was a bit of a nightmare.  When they were all assembled I printed them all on paper first.  I made them sepia with a black border so that they all tied in together and looked like they belonged with the quilt fabric.

I made sure that all the photos would fit once printed onto fabric.  When I've been talking with people about this project I kept being asked how I would get the photos onto the fabric?  The answer is really boring.  You can get specially treated cotton that will go through inkjet printers.  It comes with a backing paper on it.  The type I bought is iron on, so all you do is print the photos, cut to size (I put two on a sheet of A4), peel off the backing and iron into position.  I also put a zig-zag stitch around each photo, just to make sure they were secure.

When deciding on where to put photos I did wonder about changing the quilt to portrait rather than landscape...

... but I preferred landscape.  On the bottom photo you can probably see some pieces of tape (not pieces of eight, however).  They were just there to hold the photos in their final position before I ironed them on.  That part was scary, after that there was no going back!

After pressing and sewing the photos into position I just(!) need to add the backing, quilt the whole thing and bind it.  I did have to buy extra fabric for the backing and binding, but the rest is from the original roll-up.  The extra strips I took out weren't wasted either, I cut some (what felt like hundreds!) circles to make 'yo-yos' to attach to the corners of the photos.

And here it is, the finished quilt!

It's about 64" X 40".  The family is scattered around randomly otherwise it would have looked uneven in places!  Gran's great-grandchildren are all on the quilt twice, apart from Kyle who made an appearance after the rest of the photos were taken.  Kyle is the (proud) owner of the pirate quilt.

And here's a close up of the birthday girl herself

It being Gran's quilt she got more yo-yos than anyone else.

A close up of yours truly and my other half.

I won't embarrass the rest of the family by posting close ups of the rest of them.  Unless they want me to of course.  Just let me know!

Gran was given her quilt yesterday on her birthday.  It seemed to go down well, especially with the family, all desperate to find the picture of themselves, and to make sure I hadn't chosen an awful one of them.  Gran had no idea she was getting this.  Well done everyone for keeping to yourselves.

You may be seeing this quilt again.  It was suggested that I attach some tabs to the top so it can be hung from the wall.  Watch this space.