The Best Baby Shower Gifts

Always use the low setting on your dryer. It is okay to hang your quilt outside for a short period of time, or you can spread it out flat to finish drying. Make sure it is completely dry before folding or storing.

String quilts made by women in Gee's Bend, Alabama, and Mid-western Amish communities, have become an art form. Their stringed blocks are often square in shape or close to it, with one above the other. Sometimes sashing strips divide the blocks. The Amish string quilts can look like stacks of small squares. This pattern is named Coins.

I decided on using 35 pictures for Peggy's memory quilt. I chose pictures that showed her children at different stages of their lives. As well as pictures showing her and her husbands age regression. Her favorite color is blue, so I chose a dark blue with a light blue design, and a light blue with a dark blue design for the blocks. One thing to keep in mind when doing one for a person with Alzheimer's' is to try and keep the material fairly plain or quiet. When using a material that is very busy or loud, it just adds to their overall confusion. Something you definitely do not want.

Blanket Quilt After the prearranging the blocks on my parents bed, the quilt would come to life with color, memories and artistic design unsurpassed by any painting available.

First decide on the finished foundation (muslin) size for each block and cut the muslin one half inch larger than the desired finished block size. This allows for any puckering or tight tension variations that could draw up the size. You can always cut the finished piece down to the proper size later. Also remember that the finished block size in this case is the unfinished block size for your quilt. You will have to have a seam allowance to sew your blocks together into a quilt. A half inch should provide this necessary allowance.

Using a sewing machine, sew along the lines. For each line, start at the top of the fabric, as close to the edge as you can get. When you reach the bottom, sew a little past the edge.

Shortly after her death I came across the quilt that she made for my mother a few years before losing her eyesight. Suddenly it began to dawn upon me. When I looked at the quilt, I did not see a blanket. Instead, I saw a scrapbook made from material. It was as if, by looking at the quilt, I was paging through my family album. I remembered the times when we baked cookies with my mother, the times when my sisters and I played with our tea-set, the first "Superman"-movie I saw with my dad, my first day at school, the visits we had with our grandparents and many other special memories. Each memory was carefully interwoven into this quilt.

Baby quilt patterns can be purchased as part of a quilting kit, or found in magazines, books, and quilting stores. It is also quite easy to piece together a quilt of your own design using leftover fabric. You might want to consider using a regular sized pattern, and scaling it down to a smaller size, such as 36 x 45 inches. The size of course is up to you.