Autograph Quilt

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Do you remember the Autograph Albums from your childhood?

Well translate this to fabric and the Autograph Quilt becomes a fun patchwork celebration, or farewell, gift.

I collected the autographs in the quilt below when I moved from South Australia.  I now have a permanent memory of the people with whom I began my love of patchwork, the friends in my first Patchwork Group.

Instructions for making your own Autograph Quilt

Collecting the Autographs or Signatures:

1. Pre-wash a piece of Quilters muslin, homespun or calico.
2. Press the fabric to a sheet of Freezer Paper.
3. Rule up the blank squares for the autographs. (I used 3 1/2" squares with the corners marked off to allow me to make a snowball block)
4. It is a good idea to mark off the stitching lines so that the writing is not lost in the seams when the blocks are joined to make the quilt top.
5. You now have the  "pages" ready for the autographs. 
6. Use a zig millennium pen, pigma pen, or other fabric safe permanent pen with a medium fine nib, to write messages on the fabric. The Freezer paper will stabilise the fabric and make it easier for people to write their message.
7. Press the writing with a hot iron to set the ink when all the messages have been collected, and before the "pages" are cut apart.

Hint:

When passing the fabric around amongst the group of people involved,  suggest that they write their message on paper first to test if it will fit on the fabric. If they are not confident of writing on the fabric the message can be traced into place.

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Making the Quilt Top:

I have been trying to find time to sit and finish the instructions for the Autograph Quilt for ages and, as I do not see them being finished in the near future, the best that I can do is give you a general description of the design.

The "autograph block" is a snowball block - a square of any size with the four corners covered with a half square triangle. 

The triangles can be any size you desire as long as they are all the same size.   

Using a larger triangle will just change the shape of the block slightly but will still be effective.

The patterned "filler" block is simply a square cut the same size as the snowball block. 

In this case I created a slight colour wash effect by grading the colour of the squares diagonally across the quilt top.  (To give your quilt a colour wash effect choose fabrics by colour value rather than hue.  You will need at least one dark, one medium & one light fabric)

You could also use 4 patches or 9 patch blocks instead of one piece of fabric for this unit.

The size of the autograph block will be pre determined by the size of the fabric squares that you circulate for signing.

Make the squares a size that is easy to work with eg: 3",  4",  6" or 9" plus the seam allowances.

The snowball blocks should be made first so that you know what size to make the filler block.

The half square triangles on the Snowball blocks have the effect of softening the corners and creating the design. 

On my quilt the triangles had to be quite small as people had filled the blocks with their messages and I did not want to lose any of the writing.

I hope this helps you work out a design for your own memory quilt.

You can download a printable copy of these instructions  using Adobe Acrobat Reader.

If you do not have Adobe Acrobat Reader on your computer you can download a copy from the internet.

Get a FREE copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader 

 

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