Friday, September 17, 2010

Dad's quilt progress

Normally I wouldn't post pictures of a quilt that I'm giving away as a gift, but I'm 100% sure my dad doesn't read my craft blog. So I'm safe!
My dad's 60th birthday is next weekend & my sister & I thought it would be great for him if we (read: I- although she did do a lot of work on the photos and printing off the photo fabric) made him a photo quilt celebrating his life. My progress so far:

In my block layout, I basically designed it thru the years of his life from childhood to grandpa-hood. I especially love the photos from his childhood.

I love looking at my parents wedding pictures. They were so young, and cute! This picture cracks me up every time. It looks like my sister & brother playing dress up and feeding each other cake!

My favorite picture of my dad & I dancing at my wedding.



This quilt has been a beating, it's a photo quilt & so far have spent 18 hours on it this week. yikes! I'm trying desperately to get it finished for next weekend, well I'd prefer sooner so I'm not working on it all next week too. My sister/project manager printed off the pictures onto photo paper, I set the colors, rinsed, dried then had to cut the pictures (not all had enough border around each one, so if you are ever doing a photo quilt, make sure to leave 1/2" white border around each picture for seam allowance) and then actually made a cream colored border around each picture for it to be an 8" X 8" square. phew. That was exhausting before I even got to piece it all together! Don't get me wrong, I love quilting & sewing, but when you're on a time crunch, not so much!

My next step is to add a border around the top piece with this dark brown fabric (about 4" on each side) I love love love this fabric .


I tried to keep pretty subtle colors, but still masculine designs. I'll also do a cream binding to finish it off. So lots of work ahead!

3 comments:

Kate said...

Photo quilts are such fun. Fun to look at but can be such a pain to piece. Love your photographs and your setting. I've done two photo quilts and learned a lot on the first one, not only about the seam allowances for the photos and the "frames" but about how to keep all the pictures the same size using Photoshop Elements. Hope you get it finished in time!

April said...

Thank you! You're right- Of all the quilts I've made, I'm learning the most from this one! haha

The Kaspars said...

From Your "Project Manager" :) It looks so great!! You are very talented! I cannot sew a straight stitch so I'm glad all I had to do was deal with the photos. I know he's going to LOVE LOVE it!