Another Photo Transfer Quilt

Typically around graduation time I hear from a lot of people about making quilts for their graduates.  They are all so very special.  This year has been no exception to the rule and I've had several people who have contacted me about quilts.  One particular lady wanted a photo transfer quilt for her granddaughter with pictures of her through the years.  She brought me a variety of pictures and I dutifully copied them off onto the fabric and went through the entire process of rinsing and ironing and trimming.  I went out and got the fabric in the colors of the college she will be attending this fall and  decided on a pattern.  I decided not to do the traditional thing with the pictures all lined up in a row or used as the center of a regular pieced block.  I decided I wanted the arrangement of the pictures to appear as through they where just tossed down across the quilt without the precision alignment.  I had no ideal it would be so simple.

The first step to accomplishing this was making the decision that I did not want to cut the picture itself but the fabric surrounding the pictures.  Therefore the pictures had to have a border.  Having no ideal what I was doing I just decided that I would put a 3 1/2" border around each picture and see what happened next.  After putting the borders on the pictures I laid them out and discovered I had 2 pictures that just didn't fit.  I had 3 rows of pictures that balanced each other and then I had 2 extras.  Oh well I will think about those later and see what I can do about them.

Well the next step was really easy.  I just took my square up rulers and started cutting those borders.  I would turn the block at an angle and cut out the new square. 



I think the picture with more angle actually looks better on the quilt. 
You will notice I tried to alternate the angles from side to side.


After I cut the blocks I wanted to add another border around the pictures, mainly because I knew it would help with aligning the pictures and give me room to manulipate the rows to the proper size for the extra long twin bed since that is the size found in most college dorms and in addition I had to use the second color fabric which was a white on white print that I had found with little baby foot prints that was adorable to go with the solid maroon. 

Grandmother had told me which picture she wanted in the center of the quilt and it was the only 8 x 10 picture and I decided that this would look better just set in straight and it was large enough that I didn't need or want a second border so that it would automatically drawn the eye right to the focal point.


By not adding the white border around this picture and using the same
fabric as the sashing, it draws your eyes right to the
main picture in the quilt.

 It wasn't until I was placing the pictures in the quilt that I discovered that I had duplicate pictures in two sizes.  I had two of them!!  Oh well.  Then when I tried to substitute the two extras I had they just didn't work at all in those spots.  What now!!  I'll think about that later.

After getting all my borders around the pictures I lined up the vertical rows and trimmed all the pictures in each row to the width of the smallest picture and sewed my vertical rows.  Next I trimmed one row and added an extra strip to another to make the rows all the same size.  Finally I added in sashing between the rows and added the outside borders.

After getting the top all pressed I laid it out on the bed and that's when I decided what I was going to do with the extra 2 pictures.  I would just place them across the sashing between some of the pictures and turn them on an angle also.  Such an easy solution.  I trimmed the border down even and used bias tape over the raw edges and zigzagged it onto the quilt top.  Now  I was ready to quilt.

I really loved the way these extra pictures added an extra punch to the quilt!

I always like to do something different and something special on quilts if the customer will give me the opportunity.  I had told grandmother that I did some "quilt writing" on some special quilts and asked if there was anything she would like me to write into the quilt with the quilting.  She actually called me a couple of times before she decided on something simple "From Mammaw" and I decided to add the year. 

Every quilt is special for one reason or another.  This is one I am sure the granddaughter will always treasure and it will never be forgotten that this was a gift from a loving mammaw.  I hope you all have a great week and do something special for someone else as a rememberance for someone you loved.