craftgrrl | The Quilt of Memories

I made this quilt (my first ever, and probably last since I had no clue how involved quilting is) a while ago now, but never got around to posting the finished product. It is called The Quilt of Memories.

I made it without a pattern just going from a picture I had in my head of what I wanted it to look like. The tree trunk is cut completely from one piece of fabric (I hand drew the shape and cut around that), and is appliqued onto a single large white sheet. The leaves were cut from 3 templates I made up and also appliqued to the white sheet. I then hand embroided words (memories) onto some of the leaves. The whole quilt was then sent to be machine stitched together (after many attempts myself to free hand quilt it, but the bulk was too much to get around under the arm of my sewing machine). I then simply hand stitched on a wide bias around the edges bringing the whole thing together.

I wanted to include handprints of our sweet little girls in the branches of the tree. Here is one from our youngest, Emmeline, who was approximately 18mths old.