Memory Quilt

Grampa is not online so I can post his Christmas gift and not have to worry that the surprise will be ruined.

I first saw this pattern at A Passionate Quilter and loved it, 1) because it's a great way to use up scraps, 2) it uses repurposed jeans, which I love extra much, and 3) because I thought I could make it into the memory quilt I've been thinking about making for a couple years now. My gram passed away a couple months ago and doing this family quilt for grampa with lots of pictures, including gram (she's in the red, second square from the bottom on the right), and finding a great pattern made this a good time to try. Check out A Passionate Quilter for her pattern, the only change I made was to make bigger circles. The biggest circle I could find that I didn't mind drawing with permanent marker all around the edge was a foil pie tin, 9.5" diameter. That required geometry to figure out that a 6 3/8 " square would be the correct size for the insert. 

Anyway... I'm struck by how often I hate a project by the time it's almost done, especially a big project. I think that just helps push you through the end of the project. I'm so done with this project. I'd change a few things about this quilt. I'd make it a square smaller on each side. I wanted it to be a lap quilt (and thanks to my poor geography skills) and this quilt is a little big for a lap quilt but not big enough for a twin bed. I love the denim, but I think next time I would use flannel. With all the quilting on this quilt, it actually made the quilt stiffer rather than more flexible and I wanted a cozy snuggle up quilt. And the denim was heavy to sew. The quilt was put together in four pieces so I only had to quilt the middle line right through the middle. Thank God I actually read the directions because it would have sucked to quilt the whole thing when it was together. SUCKED. 

I originally thought I would rag the edges like the pattern linked above, but saw this other quilt at Juicy Bits where she left the edges raw and I though that might be best to not distract from the photos. And who wants to do that much cutting? Then I added another line of quilting so it was probably just as much work either way. It looks like I gave a bit more allowance than she did and I hope the edges hold up OK. I know this won't be getting washed a ton so I hope it's good.

My son says that this is definitely the gift that will make grampa cry this year. Not my goal, but I do hope he likes it!

Here's one of the sections before I joined them. And here's what the back looks like.

 

I really do like how the quilting looks.