Memorial Baby Quilt

A few weeks ago I replied to a wanted add on craigslist.org, and started the newest challenge in my quilting. The lady had a 7-month old baby girl that died of SIDS over a year ago, and she wanted someone to make a quilt from her clothes. I had never tried this before but Mom & Aunty Clariss made quite a few from grandma Hilton's clothes, so I thought I'd give it a try!

It was a bit heart-wrenching at first, because of the emotional ties; and there were such beautiful little dresses that I didn't want to cut up! I soon got over it, though, treated it like business, and started really enjoying my new project. I had no clue how long it would take, but so far I've spent 22 1/2 hours total, and still have probably 5 left. It's very time-consuming because I have to disassemble the clothes and cut and iron them just to get little pieces of fabric to try and work with. She wanted it to be log-cabin style, which worked well and I found a simple scrappy pattern online. I finished the top on saturday, and like the results! I emailed her photos (she lives in Anchorage), and both her and her husband love it. I searched online and found that there are quite a few people who do these sorts of quilts! I was so pleased with the idea and results that now I want to make one for Breanna and Levi out of their clothes when they grow up, what a bunch of fun memories. Let me know if you're interested, I'm enjoying this and thinking of doing more! Here are a few photos of what I have done:

I made the block centers from special bibs, pockets from clothes, or 4-patches.

Then I laid the centers out, made coordinating piles of the outer strips, and sewed them together. I found it challenging to keep the like fabrics apart and keep it scrappy.

This is the quilt top, ironed and ready to be sandwiched with batting and backing, and quilted.

I'm really having fun at this, but I realized that Levi & Breanna were watching the whole "dismantling" process with the scissors and seam-ripper, and hope they don't get any ideas with their perfectly good clothes!