Saturday, October 4, 2014

A Quilt of Memories for Gracie #1


Awhile back in the blog about Gracie's room at Nana and Papa's... I talked about Gracie favorite blacket. Now i will tell you the story behind the quilt. 

*****

The Quilt of Memories... This will be a fun quilt project to do with my daughter in law Stephanie.  It will be the very first quilt that she has made, and what great memories that her and Gracie will have from the making and using of this quilt too!  



(the repurposing of those baby receiving blankets)





















Let me share the story.....

Stephanie was going thru some of Gracie's baby things that were piling up in the closet.... she has found it hard to get rid of some of Gracie's things.  Well I guess one would say cleaning out the two year old's closet to make room for another phase of her life.  She had tossed all Gracie's flannel receiving blankets into the giveaway pile. When I looked at the pile and saw the receiving blankets... My creative side of the brain kick into gear once again... I immediately saw a quilt!  All the pretty colors... from shades of purples, lavenders and greens.  There was also shades of pinks, tan and light brown designs on each of the blankets and how they complimented one another.  I could wait to get started...  I've made several quilts over the years and also have fond memories of my very first quilt that I made with my grandmother.  So we too are going to make some memories... another project in the works!
Now... there is a twist to this quilt that we are making and I think that it will be a real special touch that I was able to add for Gracie.  Some of these squares in her blanket came from receiving blankets that I had saved from when her daddy was a baby.  Now there will be some challenges in incorporating these squares because of the their colors.  These squares have brown teddy bears and are in the primary color palette, which are quite different from the colors of her receiving blanket squares, but I do feel that we can make this work and it will come together very nicely in the end!
We are adding some other squares for a nice contrast.  Most of these squares are solid colors, but a few prints that are fitting for a going little girl.  Taking care not to put to many character that she will grow out of.... we wanted this blanket to be very versatile and get used for many year to come.  



Starting to lay out a design... 
 we may change up the lay out of the design as we lay it out and it starts to evolve.  As you can see we are covering almost every square inch of available floor space in the loft. 
























We changed up a few of the squares from these earlier pictures.... Which created a slightly different design but it is still very similar, you may have never noticed if not brought to one attention.  The pictures below here shows the squares sewn together making the flannel front and then it has been laid on the blue fleece backing with right sides together, where we will pin the flannel designed front down to the fleece leaving about an 8-10 inch opening to pull the quilt back though the opening so the right sides will be showing.


















Oh.... to be young again with no worries in the world!