Christmas Crafting: Take Two


I'm not entirely sure if I'm allowed to call this "Christmas crafting" since I started it in June... but it is a Christmas present so maybe that counts! Last January Heather saw a family reunioin themed quilt hanging in a quilt shop and immediately started brainstorming. I don't know how she wrangled me in to this project since I'd never sewn anything but a straight line before we started, but we teamed up and after several drafts came up with what we called the Family Tree Quilt. Luckily we have the best Grandma in the whole world who agreed to make our paper drawing into a reality. Our plan was to get them done by Christmas so we could give them to our moms on Christmas morning.

STEP ONE: DESIGN THE QUILT. I planned to put a big family tree in the center of the quilt with five branches, one for each sibling. Then I designed rectangles around the tree will with symbols for each family member. This was for sure the hardest part! I raided Grandma's scraps (which fill and entire room...) and found different fabrics to match each kid (like the purple zebra for Sami's initial because her room is purple and pink zebra, orange satin for Zander because of the blanket he carried around forever, etc.) Then I designed all the patterns and cut them out. Which took from June to September :)

STEP TWO: IRON ON THE SHAPES. After you have the fabric cut out, you iron adhesive on the back of the shapes and then iron them on to your top fabric. Heather and I just bought white sheets from bed bath and beyond because it was cheaper than buying fabric at the fabric store. Worked like a charm!


STEP THREE: HANDSTITCHING. This is where a lot of the detail comes in. I hand stitched nicknames, birthdays, anniversaries, etc onto the squares to make them more personal. In the corner squares I stitched our family scripture that my mom has had hanging in the living room ever since I can remember and in the other one I stitched the names of all the school we have been to. My parents initials went on the tree trunk and then I stitched the names of all the kids onto the leaves... eventually they will be full of grandkid names too but currently we have none :)
STEP FOUR: SEW AROUND ALL THE SHAPES. See that beautiful little sewing machine in the top right hand corner? That's my graduation present! It arrived during Thanksgiving break from my sweet parents... little did they know it was just in the nick of time.

STEP FIVE: Pick out fabric for the back of the quilt....

and SEW IT ON IN STRIPS to the front of the quilt to separate each individual rectangle.


STEP SIX: QUILT IT. I used the technique found here its called free motion quilting.








And it looks like this! I hope she cries when she opens it. I mean happy tears of course. But seriously, I have spent approximately 200 hours working on it. Merry Christmas Mom!










Comments

  1. you are so cute kam with all your crafts! love.

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  2. Wow! Kamille that is amazing! I'm sure your Mom cried a lot! What a great gift from the heart. You did an amazing job on all that too! Are you sure you haven't sewn before? Congratulations. You did great. :) Enjoy keeping up with your family what little I can. Wishing y'all a Happy New Year!

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  3. You are the cutest! It turned out SOO GOOD!

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  4. HOLY COW!?! You quilted it yourself! Oh. My. Gosh. You are amazing. If I copy your idea I may end up doing a very small quilt. :) Good luck one-upping this mother's day! It seems like that should count for Mother's Days and Christmas for at least 5 years, right?

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