Gramma's 79th Birthday

I know how to spell Grandma. When I was little, I misspelled it Gramma and it has just stuck. Don't make too much fun of me.

My Gramma turned 79 last month. Since my grandparents really don't need anything, I decided to make something for them to brighten their day.

I started this photo of my gramma & three of her sisters.


I put it into Photoshop to crop and alter it. I used the cutout filter to blur it a little bit and determine how many colors (6) it should have.

I printed that out and traced it onto tracing paper. Using colored pencils, I colored each fabric a different color.

Then I cut a chunk of freezer paper for each of the colors. I translated the colors into a pattern and traced the pattern (backwards) for each onto the freezer paper.

After that I ironed the freezer paper to the back of the fabric and cut out each piece.

Once all the pieces were cut out, I layered them and used fabric glue to build my image.

Once that dried I machine quilted the mini quilt top on top of a layer of felt.




Then I put it in a frame.


It was a fun project to do. I think my gramma liked it. I love the thank-you cards she sends... the card for this one conveyed a little awe about the project and that I had come across this photo. Whenever I make her something, there's a story about the subject in the card. This one was about the dress she was wearing (her favorite) that she got to close to the pot-belly stove and burned the front off of.

I got the idea for this from an article titled Creating Figures in Fabric written by Leni Levenson Wiener and published in Quilting Arts Magazine's February/March 2010 issue.

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