A memory quilt

Someone contacted me a few weeks ago wanting a memory quilt for her husband made out of his recently deceased grandmother's pajamas. This quilt stumped me for a little while. One pair was pink, one purple, one with blue roses, and two with leopard prints. There were only 2 prints that struck me as something he would enjoy in a quilt, one white with red cardinals and one blue with white deer. I wasn't completely sure how I was going to make this work. But I visited a couple of fabric stores, looked around, rummaged through my stash and scraps and finally felt like I could put something masculine and cohesive together. And I did end up adding one blue floral from the pajamas, but it didn't seem overly girly to me. I tried to stick to outdoorsy prints, the colors blue, gray, red & green, and organic rather than graphic prints.  In all, there are about 25 prints, plus the gray which is Kona coal.

I didn't include the leopard prints on the front. I never see a man walking around with leopard print anything, but the colors were not feminine, and the fabrics were so very soft that I thought they'd make a perfect backing. I used the rest of the pajama prints from the front and ended up with a back that was completely made out of the memory fabrics.

Except for that one block towards the bottom that you probably already noticed. That one is a 9-patch of my favorite prints from the front, just for the fun of it.

The back was fun, and super soft, but not only were most of the fabrics heavier than quilting cotton to start with, they had to be stabilized, which added more weight. I didn't want to add the weight of cotton batting to the quilt, and polyester is out of the question for me, so I chose wool batting instead. As a bonus, wool batting doesn't shrink as much as cotton batting.

I quilted it in an overall stipple and bound it with more of the coal. Both the front and the back were busy enough that they didn't need another design element on the edge. The size is 50" x 70" - she just wanted a lap quilt that he could use while watching TV or something. For all my hesitations, I'm really happy with how it turned out.

I'll be linking this up to Crazy Mom Quilts for her Finish it Friday link up.