Show Off Saturday: A Memory Quilt of Patches

This is a Patch Quilt – NOT a patchwork quilt, lol. Earlier this year my sister in law gave me my brother’s patch collection and asked me to make a quilt with it for his birthday. Apparently, he’s been collecting patches from every state he visits (plus Canada) as well as others like ‘Elvis.’

It took me a long time to figure out what to do with the patches. At first I thought I might do a patchwork quilt, with a square or triangle for each patch, but in the end I decided that would be too busy.

I auditioned several fabrics and decided this navy print from Cotton + Steel looked best with the patches. I hung the fabric on my design board and let my kids decide where all the patches would go. Once they were all pinned to the fabric, I sewed them on using invisible thread.

Using my free motion quilting foot with my feed dogs down, I sewed around each patch with a zig zag stitch. Did you know you could do that? It was the easiest way to sew the edges of all the patches. I travelled in between the patches with the invisible thread. After quilting it barely showed

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This quilt is so heavy! The patches weigh a ton. It would have been really hard to quilt sitting at my sewing machine, so I put it on the Grace Frame and quilted it that way with my Juki. I quilted a geometric wandering pattern on the borders and pebbles in between the patches.

I love how it turned out, but it’s not very cuddly. How could it be with over a hundred stiff patches? His birthday is coming up soon and I can’t wait to hear what he thinks.

So, what have you been sewing up this week? Did you make something with one of my free sewing tutorials or patterns? I would love to see! Tag me on Instagram @sewcanshe.

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Happy Sewing!

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Disclosure: some of my posts contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through one of those links I may receive a small commission, so thank you for supporting SewCanShe when you shop! All of the opinions are my own and I only suggest products that I actually use. 🙂