Photo Quilt Tutorial

This is a quilt I made for a friend at church, Beata.

She is giving it to her grandmother for her 90th birthday.
She e-mailed me 20 pictures in sepia tone, spanning five generations.
She also bought the fabrics.

Here is a brief tutorial.
I did not follow a pattern, just made it up as I went.

To put the photos on fabric you can buy ready to print sheets at craft stores,
OR
you can treat 100% cotton with Bubble Jet. It is a liquid you soak your fabric in and let dry. Then you iron freezer wrap, shinny side down towards fabric, it will stick to it.
This is the more cost effective way of doing it.

Using a rotary cutter with a paper blade (this would be a dull one, not a good one saved for fabric only), measure and trim the sheet to the size of 8.5" by 11", to run through the printer.

First I had the pictures printed at Wal-Mart and ran them through the printer, but they looked more black and white than sepia. So then I ran them directly from the computer to the printer. This helped the color greatly.

After printing, iron to seal the color in. These were done as approximately 4x6.

Cut them apart.

Trim them with a 1/4" seam allowance.

I cut some strips of brown for the corners of the pictures.

Pinned them and sewed a 1/4" seam for the brown, remove pin just before getting to it.

After sewing, trim the corners, leaving a 1/4" seam allowance.

Press corners back.

Use a square and trim the corners to be even with the picture,
being sure to leave the 1/4" seam.

I cut strips of yellow, 2" wide and framed in each picture
and then squared them up leaving a 1" frame.

Strips of the main fabric 4" wide.

Framed each picture using a 1/4" seam, using the Log Cabin pattern.

Square them up.

I laid them out on the bed. Because these pictures are vertical and horizontal it caused a bit of a problem, so on some of the squares I added an extra strip to make the rows even.

To do again, I would have cut the orange strips to be 5-6" wide,
then squared them up so I would not have had to add the
extra strips to make the blocks large enough.

Some I added a strip on the top, others on the bottom.

I sewed 5 rows of 4 squares. Evened them up, then sewed the rows together.
Then square the whole quilt up.

Cut yellow strips 2" wide.
Sewed these as a boarder to the quilt top,
sides first, then the top and bottom.

Tape the backing, face down to the floor.

Spray baste the batting to the backing.

Spray baste the top to the batting.

After sandwiching the quilt together,
I stipple quilted it on the machine.

After quilting, square up again.
Here I measured 1 1/2" from the seam.

Cut binding strips, these are 4". Sew them to the quilt, right sides facing.

Trim up.

Here you can see the stipple quilting.
I did it just in the orange areas, not on the photos.

This is the back side, press down a seam on the binding.

Fold the binding over and blanket stitch the binding down on the backing.

Add a label, with the grandmother's name and a couple of verses.
(click on the photo to enlarge)

VIOLA!