We
recently had a series of BIG events in our family: my Mom turned 70, my Dad
turned 80, and they celebrated their 40th wedding
anniversary. To mark the occasion, we had a big family gathering at my
folks home in Virginia. My sister and I knew we wanted to do something
special for them, beyond the party, and of course that something special had to
involve a quilt.
After
throwing around a couple of ideas, we settled on a ‘this is your life’
theme. The idea was to scour our family photos and pick out some that
represented different periods in their lives. We would print the photos
out on fabric paper (Miracle Fabric
Sheets) and somehow integrate them into a quilt. We gathered our own
pictures – luckily, my sister had just completed scrapbooks of our childhoods –
along with pictures family members sent to us at our request. We settled on 40
photos; one third of my dad, one third of my mom, and the remaining third of
one of them with my sister or I growing up.
We decided to take the 'this is your life theme' one step further and
border the pictures with a movie reel affect. After auditioning several
different black fabrics we decided on Kona Charcoal {swoon!} for the movie
reels. If you've never used Kona charcoal in your quilts, stop what you
are doing and go out and buy a bolt of it right now. Yes, a bolt.
You won't regret it! The quilting was super simple lines that would
highlight the pictures themselves. The back was pieced with the leftover
solids, to keep with the modern-ness (is that a word?) of the quilt.
The quilt now hangs in my parents' living room. Each time I go to
visit, I love to look at the pictures and think of the history that exists
within the quilt. Four lifetimes,
really. I look forward to the day my own daughter looks at the quilt and
asks about each of the pictures in it.
