Family Tree Quilt

My mother Leta, holding one of the two family tree wall hangings I made this past spring.  My plan was to make one for the auction for the family reunion we have of my mother’s family every two years - this was the summer for that reunion.  She was one of 6 siblings and the second child.  Her oldest sister has passed away and my mother is 94 and was unable to attend the reunion this year due to health concerns so I decided I would make one wall hanging for the reunion and one for her.  By the way her other siblings are 92, 91, 89, and 80 and were all able to make it to the reunion plus lots of my cousins.  My mother comes from a long lived family as her parents lived to 90 and 95 years.Here is my design reversed as I planned to fuse the tree and we all know that the pattern will be flipped after fusing.  Each branch represented one of my mother’s siblings and the smaller branches represent their children and the leaves represent their grandchildren.  I decided to stop there as I wasn’t sure how many of the next generation there were and would have hated to miss someone.  Funny thing about the tree design is that I drew and refined my design and was about to trace it on the fusible when I looked at it carefully and I only had 5 major branches instead of 6 so had to redraw it with the correct number.This is a strange looking photo of the two trees but I have this great piece of batik that is variegated blue and light brown and I wanted to have the top of the trees covering a blue area and the base on the brown.  I moved them around until I found an area I liked and then cut the background squares from my perfect spots. Here is the pallet of the batik fabrics I pulled to use in these quilts.  You can see the background fabric behind all the colors and the brown fabric in front that will be the trunk.  The rest were all used for leaves.  Here the trunks are cut out and all the leaves.  Since they were so small I positioned the trunk and fused it then used tweezers to place the leaves.  I had to refer to my pattern to make sure I had the correct number of leaves on each small branch before I touched the iron to them.  I did check several times to make sure I was correct before fusing.  All fused and bordered, ready to quilt.  I used small sections of all the leaf colors for the one narrow boarder and I like how it brings all the colors out one more time.  You really can’t tell but the brown border has some reds, golds and blues in it so was a perfect choice for this quilt.I machine quilted a wavy design as the base of the design then I quilted more lines in each of those sections. The close up photos really show the bobbles and inconsistencies but like the old saying goes I don't think you can see it on a galloping horse!My mother’s maiden name was Burbank so quilted that into the area below the base of the treeCurlicues quilted in the sky and outline the leaves.  I did quilt some texture to the trunk of the tree too.  Have any of you noticed the birds?  There is no reason they are there but to fill in and add to the design.  The branches with no leaves mean that person didn’t have any children.

The outside border is quilted with a sort of wood grain look.  Before showing my final photo of the finished quilt I wanted to show you my label.  I put the sibling names on the branches and my grandparents names but didn’t add the rest of the names.  The tree reads from left to right from oldest to youngest so I am the second branch up on the left side of the Leta branch.  I used Bubble Jet Set to make the ink be permanent on the fabric before printing it.  After scanning the tree drawing I typed in the information then printed it on the treated fabric that is ironed to a piece of freezer paper.  I do most of my quilt labels this way and can add photos or drawings and can type out my words and know how everything will look on the finished label.  With hand written labels I have misspelled words as I am carefully drawing out the letters so this solves that problem.

Ta Da….all done.  This is just a photo of one but believe me I got them both done and they look like a pair of twins.  One of my aunts won the bid to take the other one home to Iowa from the reunion but my mother can enjoy seeing hers too.  She was surprised when I gave it to her as she knew I was making one for the reunion auction but not the second one for her.  I got to her before the reunion in western Nebraska at Fort Robinson as her siblings all stopped to see and visit with her before and right after the reunion so she didn’t feel like she missed seeing them and she could show off her quilt too. 

Until Later,
Lynn