Making Memories

Recently I talked about my daughter's BIG birthday and how number 8 is important to our family. One of the things I decided to start as a tradition was to make a memory quilt.

Before I share how I did it, let me preface it with, I am a BEGINNER. My mom never sewed. I took Home Ec in high school and loved it. But without a teacher by my side, I didn't know what to do.

A few years ago, my husband overheard me say that I would love to learn how to make quilts. That Christmas, there was a heavy rectangular box under the tree for me. I was convinced it was that Kitchen Aid mixer I had been hinting about. Imagine my surprise when I opened it and saw a sewing machine.

A nice sewing machine.

A sewing machine labeled as a Quilter's machine.

Let me remind you, I hadn't sewn since high school home ec (nearly 20 years ago - ouch! that's old) and didn't have a clue how to use my new machine.

Enter: The sweetest lady you could ever meet that I go to church with. She is an amazing quilter. She always has one or two quilts in the works. She offered to teach those at church who wanted to learn how to quilt. I took her up on her offer. I owe her for life!

So at this time, I was so excited to take on all this new quilting knowledge. I knew I wanted to make a memory quilt for Megan. I googled. I searched. I couldn't find anything that was what I had in mind.

So I decided to figure this out on my own. This is what I came up with:

I promise it was pretty simple.

I bought two Charm Packs from Moda. They are 5x5 precut squares.
I bought one Jelly Roll from Moda that coordinated with my Charm squares.
I bought two packs of transferable paper to material fabric from JoAnns (I used my 40% off coupons on both of them).
Plain white fabric
Fabric for binding and her name.

To Make The Pictures:
I chose the pictures that I wanted for the quilt. I cropped the pictures on the computer to a 4 and 1/2 inch square. (I wanted the whole picture on the square. I knew that I would use a 1/4 inch seam allowance on all four sides.) I then ran the paper through the printer. Then I followed the instructions on the package to iron and soak the material in water. Then trim your pictures into squares (leaving 1/4 inch of white around the picture).

To Make the Rows:
I simply sewed 10 squares across. I wanted a random look so I made sure that the colors were separated just right. I added the pictures squares randomly. Once all the rows were sewn together, I then sewed the rows one by one to each other. I even added one special square at the bottom right corner:

To Make the Smaller Square Sash:
I took some of the strips from the Jelly Roll and sewed them together (I think I count 18 strips - before they repeat). After they were sewn together, I then used my ruler to cut them down the sewn strips to create 2 inch squares.

To Make the Name Banner:
I cut a strip of white fabric the height and width I wanted. I added Megan's name using my handy Wonder Under following the same technique outlined here. To make the flowers, I used extra strips from my Jelly Roll and made individual circles, then ironed them together to make the flowers.




Quilting:
I sent this one off to be professionally quilted. I knew it was one that I want to last a long time, so it was worth the money to have it done. I love the daisy pattern that she used. And I especially loved how she added the daisy's to the banner.




Binding:
I love the binding technique that is offered here. It makes for easy corners. I used the same material for the binding that I used for her name.

And not only do I love it...Megan loves it too!