May is Personal History Month and today I'd like to talk about ways to document your personal history in a quilt. Throughout the years quilters have made quilts to commemorate important personal and public milestones including weddings, anniversaries, town centennials and bi-centennials, political events and all sorts of achievements great and small for families and quilt groups.
Many quilts feature entire family trees, and many modern quilts feature scanned photographs of loved ones. Some personal history quilts are as simple as a collection of T-shirt logos that reflect a love of sports or particular musical groups or events, or appliqued designs showing pastimes that were important to the subject of the quilt.
Another way to commemorate your personal history in fiber is through journal quilting which combines many aspects of traditional and art quilting into unique and personal mini quilts. Journal quilts can feature printed or embroidered text, found objects, photographs and anything else that expresses the thought you want to document.
Here are some instructions for making a family tree quilt, complete with space for photos for each family member. The great thing is that you can make many extra leaves and your offspring and their offspring can add more names and photos to the tree as it is passed down through the generations.
Do you have a favorite personal history quilt? Give us a link to a photo in the comments. We'd love to see it!
Kelly
Comments
Here's a link to memory quilts that my mom and I have done. My mom's family tree quilt is the 6th one down. Unfortunatly, some of the printed pictures ran when she washed it, so we are printing new ones to replace them.
quilt-pictures.com and click on Memory Quilts
Oh that's lovely Tammy. I'm sorry the pictures ran! I'm always scared that will happen, so I rarely use printed fabrics, but I've seen some really nice quilts done that way. Thanks for posting!
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