Heirloom Birthday Boy Quilt

Hi everyone,

What I am sharing today is the definition of a labour of love. I don’t usually hand-embroider much, possibly because that quick satisfaction of the whir of my sewing machine cannot really be beaten but when I inherited my Nana’s embroidery threads in February, I decided I wanted to use them on something meaningful.

To do this, I decided to make a quilt for my nephew. I bought an alphabet quilt topper template and began with enthusiasm… then life took over, I worked lots, we moved house, went on holiday and the quilt remained 4 letters in for about 3 months. I picked it up again in September and I pretty much worked on it until about 3 days before my gorgeous nephew’s birthday! I wish I could say, “oh, this… this was easy”. But that would be a LIE! It was a long process but I knew that Ollie and his Mummy and Daddy would absolutely love it and this kept me going. It wasn’t all bad, of course, I sat in front of the TV mostly and worked away at it and the fact that they are individual letters meant I felt like I was doing it step by step, rather than one big picture.

The colours of the threads are so bright and pretty and the images are childlike and just perfect for the occasion. I added his name to the middle and then backed it with an iron-on wadding. The quilting lines between were then added by hand too. I was tempted to do this by machine but the pattern is designed to overlap the lines sometimes so I sewed this by hand too.

I then backed it in a lovely bright blue by sewing them right sides together, trimming it, turning out and then hand sewing the hole shut. I then ironed on my little “made by Autnie Emma” label, which my niece designed on the Dutch Label Shop.

It was so well received and totally worth it, my sister absolutely loved it and I know it will be an heirloom forever, which will carry a little bit of my Nana with it.

Until I get another bright idea like this, I will definitely be sticking to machine sewing!