This Week's Project: Grandma's Quilt Bracelet

This week's project is the one I mentioned a while back that was published in the May 2010, Mother's Day Issue, of Bead Trends Magazine.

Since the holidays are coming and crafty people are thinking of meaningful gifts they can make for their loved ones, I wanted to share this fun and crafty project.

I had originally created this project for my book, but in the end, it was agreed to pull it since it had a little bit different vibe than the other projects. I was just a little bit bummed, but then the opportunity to submit projects for the Bead Trends Mother's Day issue came up and it made perfect sense to me!

This project was inspired by the quilt my Mom's Mom made me back in the mid-1970's when I was probably 10 or so years old. She had so many children and grandchildren, I was so surprised when she chose me for one of her holiday gift projects that year. She would typically either crochet an afghan or create a quilt for one or two people throughout the year and give them as holiday gifts.

The cool thing is, my Mom actually contributed some fabric for the patchwork quilt from leftover scraps that she had used to make clothes for me and my sisters. I used the quilt through college and a year or two into my married life before it was retired to a zippered plastic bag. So, when I found it all these years later while working on the book, I wanted to represent it in some way in a jewelry piece.

I layed it out on the lawn and got up on a ladder to take some pictures of it. I uploaded them to the computer and cropped them down to the patchwork squares.

I found some very cool sticky backed fabric sheets that were made to go through a color printer that I used to print the patchwork squares. I cut them out and stuck them onto these frosty light blue beads using a little bit of mod podge to protect them from wear.

Now I have my Grandma's quilt to carry around on my wrist anytime I like!