Make like a tree and Leave.

 That’s what the logical part of my brain should have done when the creative side of my brain said “Hey, let’s make a family tree quilt for Nan’s 90th birthday! Awesome idea!”. Yeah not so much. I hate applique. I hate hand sewing. I hate fiddly cutting. Yay creative brain, combine all three for a nightmare of a quilting project. Awesome idea. Really.

I have at least finished embroidering all the names onto the leaves. All 38 of them. That’s a start.



Here’s me and my siblings on our section of the tree. I did think about randomising the names around the tree, but it seems to make more sense to loosely group them in families. Very loosely. Families are complicated.



Here’s the rough layout. Don’t mind the white paper trunk. That’ll magically change to brown fabric for the actual quilt. (Some names have been blurred out to protect the innocent – my hand sewing is not –that- terrible). I"m roughly using the tree layout from the Don't Look Now pattern. Roughly.

The background fabric is one I printed on Spoonflower. Regular readers have heard this story a billion times, feel free to skip it.

I went through my Nan’s old letters (with permission, I’m not a total snoop haha!) and found one of the first love letters my Grandfather wrote to her when they were dating in the early 40’s. I picked out a beautiful snippet, tidied it up and put it as a repeating text and made my own fabric on Spoonflower. Very impressed with how it turned out.



The snippet of the letter says:
“We are going to get engaged, and then married, and live happily ever after. Now don’t you think that is a Swell Romance Story. Well Pat dearest, I will have to close.”
Isn’t that beautiful? . Here’s a pic of their wedding day. As you can see they did go on to get engaged and then married. And lived happily for some years.



My grandfather passed away when my Mum was 16 so most of us on that family tree quilt above never had the chance to meet him. Love that I’m able to include him in this way for my Nan’s 90th birthday

So this is going to be a fiddly quilt. It’s going to be take a bit of time, and the deadline is looming next month. I may not be enjoying making it now, but I know it’ll be worth it in the end. Oh and don’t worry, I’ve made sure all the family know that I’m inheriting this quilt back some day in the future. I bloody well better after all this hard work!

And that my friends, is my current big WiP. Now to go and find out how to best applique this. Suggestions welcome.