How to Make Heirloom Photo Quilts

Heirloom family photos can be incorporated in a quilt.

An heirloom photo quilt is a touchable, soft scrapbook with huge potential for a cozy trip down memory lane. Imagine snuggling under a quilt composed of photographs of your parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents and great-grandparents. A child's quilt made of heirloom photos will add pictures to bedtime stories about "the olden days." An heirloom photo quilt also can commemorate a special birthday or anniversary with photographs illustrating memorable moments and important places from the recipient's past.

Things You'll Need

• 24 heirloom photographs
• Freezer paper
• 3 yards white muslin fabric
• 2 yards printed cotton fabric
• Scissors
• Ruler
• Computer
• Scanner
• Ink jet printer
• Thread
• Needle
• 1 yard quilt batting
• Quilting hoop
• 24 safety pins

Instructions

Transfer Heirloom Photos to Fabric

1. Scan each heirloom photograph and save it on your computer. Move each saved photo into a word-processing program and resize it to 3 inches by 3 inches.

2. Prepare the fabric by cutting 24 pieces of freezer paper and 24 pieces of white muslin to 8 1/2 by 11 inches. Iron each sheet of freezer paper to one sheet of muslin. Trim all loose edge threads so they don't jam the printer.

3. Print each heirloom photograph on a sheet of the freezer/muslin paper. Peel off the freezer paper and cut the muslin around the photograph, leaving a 1-inch border on each edge. Each square will measure 5 inches across.

Assemble the Quilt

1. Cut printed cotton fabric into 24 5-inch squares. Assemble the quilt by sewing the print and photograph squares together in a checkerboard fashion with 1/4 inch seams, six squares wide and eight squares long. The quilt will measure 32 inches by 24 inches.

2. Cut a border from the print fabric, cutting two pieces to measure 32 inches by 5 inches and two pieces measuring 34 inches by 5 inches. Sew the border strips to the short sides first, and add border strips to the remaining sides. The finished quilt will measure 44 inches by 33 inches. Make all seams 1/4 inch.

3. Cut the remaining white muslin for the quilt back to 44 inches by 33 inches, the same size as the finished quilt. Cut the quilt batting to the same size.

4. Layer the quilt back, batting and quilt top. Use the quilt hoop to secure all three layers, centering the hoop in the middle of the quilt. Pin the quilt edges with the safety pins.

5. Sew through all three layers of the quilt at the seams with a needle and thread using a straight stitch within the circle of the quilt hoop. Move the hoop until all the seams have been quilted.

6. Simply tuck under the quilt back and and top edges to finish the quilt. Tuck the back edges one-half inch over the batting and the top edge one-half inch under. Sew small stitches around the perimeter of the quilt to secure the edges.

Tips & Warnings

• Include additional heirloom photographs and printed fabric squares--and longer border pieces--to make the quilt a larger size. Do the reverse to make a small quilt, such as for a baby.