Addy's Memory Quilt

I am super excited about this project!  The end result will be a memory quilt for my niece Addison designed with clothes and blankets from when she was a baby.  She just turned five and getting ready to start kindergarten.  I think this is a great time to do a little closet cleaning but also reminisce on her life and adventures up to this major milestone.  My goal for this blog, however, is to keep a running record of the steps to completion.

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THE QUILT TOP
First, my sister-in-law collected the keepsakes that she wanted to incorporate into the quilt.  I really predicted all pink, but was pleasantly surprised to see some blues and yellows as well.  The items consisted of onesies, pj's, overalls, burp cloths, dresses, and blue jeans.  After sorting through the bag of goodies (and with a little encouragement from my SIL to use the corduroy and jean materials), I decided to use all of the pieces except for an adorable white knitted sweater.  It was just too precious to cut up!

~stack of goodies~

Second, I cut the pieces using a 6.5" square ruler to create my quilt blocks.  I absolutely love the square templates!  They make cutting and squaring up for a project like this a breeze.  Ok, here's my honest moment...I was scared to death to start cutting!  Baby clothes are just so cute, but I told myself that this is a MEMORY quilt and Addison will get more use from it as a collection of memories that she and her friends/family can discuss then just having a bag of clothes stored in the closet.  For the clothes that were smaller than 6.5", I attached them to a piece of coordinating material as the background block and created a 3-D effect.

~25 squares ready for borders~

Third, I used a basic white border around the blocks to help them stand out rather than get washed up in the border which is a light pink with butterflies cotton fabric.  After getting the borders sewn, I then stitched the individual blocks together to create one of the rows.  The white border was 1.5" wide and the pink border was 2.5" wide.

~blocks with borders

~a finished row~

Fourth, one row leads into many more rows!  All rows then get stitched together and the top and bottom pink borders attached.  The quilt top is almost complete!

~pink border complete~

Oops....didn't get a picture of this stage!

Fifth, I used an adorable teal flower pattern with hints of white, pink, and lime green as the outside border for the entire quilt top.  The border was 4" wide.

~quilt top complete~

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THE BACKING, QUILTING, AND BINDING

Tah-Dah!!!  All finished!  For the backing I used a warm and natural material that was so much easier to quilt than the poly-fil that I had been using.  (Learn something new everyday, right?). The back and binding fabric was turquoise with white vines scattered all over that complemented the front.  I used a simple hill/valley quilting technique on the pink borders to give all the pieces stability.  You can see the design on the back photo better than the front photo.  So after almost 3 months working on this project, my overall impression is...

Love it!