Memory Quilt

[silverwing21.livejournal.com]

Hey all. I made this quilt awhile back as a graduation gift for my best friend, and I thought I'd share.

The process:
I had a stock pile of old blue jeans and so I cut out 44 nine by nine inch squares. I made "patches" of different things that she loved or were big things in her life (like the school logo and clubs she was in) out of felt and glued them onto the squares with tacky glue. I cut out a square of fabric that equaled the size of four of the smaller squares for the middle and cut out felt letters to spell her name. The eight squares around her name square, I used a bleach pen (wonderful things!) and wrote out quotes that meant something to her and let them set over night. Then I washed them out by hand the next day. There are 8 squares that have pics of us and other friends on them that I printed on to printable fabric and sewed on. The back isn't pictured, but I pieced together random pieces of flannel (cuz is so comfortable) crazy quilt style. As this was my first quilt, I didn't really know how to go about putting the layers together, so I layed out the back, the batting, and the top on as they would be when it was finished and just sewed all the way around. It shifted a bit, so it's not quite perfect, but that was ok. Then I just took bias tape and went around the edges.

It was an awkward process, since I kinda' made up my own rules as I went along. It took a long time to finish, but she loved it and it turned out to be a pretty good college grad gift.

Click HERE to see the quilt.