Memory Quilt #2: His

My first memory quilt was made in 2008 on commission, using fabric from the baby clothes of my client’s daughter. This little girl has a brother and their mother has saved all his baby clothes too. One of my projects this summer has been to make another memory quilt, this one for him.

When I looked at the clothes, the first thing I noticed was stripes. Stripes, stripes, and a few plaids thrown in for good measure. This was going to be fun!

For her quilt, the baby clothes were cut into quarter-circle shapes. For his quilt, I decided to go with a hexagon shape.

I used 1-1/2″ sided hexagon templates, precut from Hugs’n Kisses fusible interfacing. The beauty of this product is that the templates can stay inside the shape and don’t need to be removed like freezer paper.

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The hexagon templates were ironed onto the wrong side of garment…

… then cut out leaving a seam allowance.

The seam allowance was basted using the Apliquick method. Water-soluble glue was applied to the seam allowance and the edges were turned using Apliquick rods.

In no time, 200 hexagons were ready to sew.

A background fabric was chosen as a backdrop for the hexies: Basic Grey Grunge from Moda Fabrics.

The hexagons were arranged onto the background fabric leaving a half-inch space between them. I created a spacing guide to keep them even.

Each hexagon was then machine appliquéd onto the background fabric.

After washing the quilt top to soften the precut interfacing templates, the quilt was machine quilted simply with straight lines from point to point of each hexagon. When all the points are connected, it creates a background grid of equilateral triangles. An accent strip was inserted to add a bit of color beside the binding.

Her memory quilt was called “Butterfly Kisses”, just like the song about a little girl growing up too fast. I thought it would be fun to stick with the theme of song titles and decided to call this one “Forever Young”. There are a number of songs with that title, but Bob Dylan’s and Rod Stewart’s have some lovely sentiments:

May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you
May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
May you stay forever young
~ Bob Dylan

May the good Lord be with you
Down every road you roam
And may sunshine and happiness
surround you when you’re far from home
And may you grow to be proud
Dignified and true
And do unto others
As you’d have done to you
Be courageous and be brave
And in my heart you’ll always stay
Forever Young
~ Rod Stewart