Sunday, April 17, 2011

Make A Patchwork Quilt Your Family Will Love

By Jane Green


I was skimming through a few patchwork quilt patterns yesterday and nothing was truly grabbing my attention. After looking at design after design, I began thinking about how to make a patchwork quilt that my family would be interested in.

To be truthful, I was struggling with concepts on something that everyone would like. With so many sundry interests (and disinterests) it was tough to think of something that everybody wants.

But then I hit on an idea.

When I was doing some ancestry research two weeks ago, I was debating it with some older family members. While discussing the past and who married who, I spotted that virtually all the other family members had an interest in the conversation and were interested in their ancestors.

I returned and did a little research and mapped out a significant slice of the family history. I recalled this while considering patchwork quilt ideas and thought it might be a good idea if I mixed the 2!

A square patchwork pattern would form the perfect base to sketch out the family tree. like a grid, I'm able to place the names of all of the families and folks and assign them a square and position, the same way you do on paper.

When I first initally drew up the pattern, I discovered 2 things.

First the tree is best done sideways. Each time family members marry, change names and have youngsters, the tree is expanded sideways rather than down.

Secondly, the square sizes I used initially were far too large. After halving the scale of the squares, I found I could fit the whole family history on the quilt and still have enough room in each square to sew the names and link them into the tree.

It's not quite finished yet, but let me tell you, it looks great and I should hide it from my folks. They're all so eager to see it, all of them keep trying to sneak in and have a look at it.

So if you're after a patchwork quilt idea that your family will like, go with this one.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment