The material choice is be next.  I find calico a nice weight, and it sews beautifully.  You will also want a material that launders well, so stay away from for example wool.  You can choose the color based on the person that your making the memory quilt for or your own favorite color.  You will need 2 complimenting colors.  For my mother-in-law’s memory quilt I chose her favorite color… blue.  One was a dark blue with a light blue pattern on it.  The other color was like a mirror image of the first,  light blue with a dark blue pattern on it.  I find some really nice material at JOANN Fabric. Joann.com

Remember if you do a memory quilt for a person who has Alzheimer’s to chose a pattern that is not too loud or busy.  It tends to just add to their overall confusion.  When I chose the photo’s for Peggy’s memory quilt,  I chose photos that regressed her children from present day back to when they were infants.  For those of you who are lucky enough not to know anyone afflicted with this horrible and hateful disease, Alzheimer’s patients retain their first memories the longest.  The ones that just happened, are the first to go.   This is why in the early stage of the disease a person might not recall where they parked the car or what they had for dinner the night before.  But they will recalled things that happened in their childhood with such clarity that it is at times quite intimidating.   So, with this in mind I tried to keep Peggy connected to her children as long as possible.  She may not know my husband is her oldest son. but believe me she knows that little boy or baby is her son Larry.  So her quilt was truly a “Memory” quilt.

For my Mom, I made her a “Family” quilt.  Everyone in the family sent me something that when you saw it you knew who it was from.  For example my husband was in the military for 20 years, so for his square I used camouflage material.  My daughter loves sunflowers, so her square was..you guessed it sunflowers.  I used an old nightgown for my square.   It had really seen better days, and every time I wore it my Mom made a comment about it.  So it was only fitting that it found it’s way onto her quilt.  They also sent me pictures of each member of “their” family.  Mom’s “Family” Quilt had 28 squares on it and every square had a different material.  It was beautiful.

You will need approximately  1 & 1/4 yards of two different colors of material.  This amount is based on your squares being 12″ big and using 35 photos.   Adjust the amount to fit your needs.  The way I came up with this formula was to take the number of photos you want on your quilt and that will tell you the number of squares  you will have.   After know the number of squares, and lay it out on paper, you can then take the number of squares and multiply it by 12″ (or what  ever size you want your squares to be).  Most materials are 45″ wide, so plan the amount you buy on this formula.   

You will also need 2 &1/2 yards of  white material.  This is what you will iron your transfer pictures on to.  It is very important that you get “white” because other wise your photos will look muddy or just plain weird.  I buy just a plain white flat sheet for this, just make sure that it is of average or better thread count so your photos won’t look too scratchy.  You can always find a way to use the rest of the white material.  Your next quilt!!  What a great idea.  I make my white squares 9″, that way  I have a 3 inch border of the colored material around each picture.  Remember to allow 1/4″ for seam allowance on each square.

This is a short article I wrote .  The subject is very dear to me

Memory quilts for Alzheimers patients are a terrific thing to make.  It is a quilt with photographs of the patients loved ones on it.  The reasoning behind the quilt is very simple: to keep them grounded in this time to the family. When someone  is afflicted with Alzheimers they lose their latest memories first and keep their oldest memories the longest. So they may not recall where they  parked the car, or what they had for dinner, but they remember things that happened along time ago with such clarity, that it is at times, very intimidating.

My mother-in-law was diagnosed with Alzheimers in 1996.  The idea to make her a memory quilt came from the fact that I made my Mother a family quilt one year for Mother’s Day.  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 Alzheimers 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.

I scanned the photos and then printed them onto photo transfer sheets.  I ironed the transfer on to a piece of white material that was just a little bit larger than the picture.  The white square and photo was sewn on top of one of the 12″  blue squares. I then added eyelet trim and blue ribbon around each photo. Putting dark blue ribbon on a light blue square, and light blue ribbon on a dark blue square.

I then sewed all the squares together, in an alternating pattern.  I now had the quilt top.  I used soft fleece for the backing and put a piece of quilt batting in between the two.  I found that if you spray an adhesive on the quilt batting it helped to keep the pieces from shifting too much. After pinning the quilt, I sewed a dark blue blanket binding around the outside edge.  All that was left was to tie it.  I used 6 strand embroidery floss, and hand knotted every corner except the corners at the blanket binding.

When I gave her the memory quilt, she didn’t quite know what to do with it.  She would sit and touch the pictures for hours at a time.  She is now in the final stages of Alheimers’ and we have hung it up on the wall next to her bed.  She stares and talks to that quilt every day.  Of course you can’t understand what she says all the time, but that’s OK.  I know she is still enjoying it, and that’s what counts…her enjoyment.

After I scanned the photo, I then cropped it or enlarged it, which ever the photo needed.  You will have to find out if your printer, prints on the top or the bottom of your transfer sheets. This way you will know what way to  load the sheet  into your printer.  I usually test print the photo on a regular sheet of computer paper to make sure it looks OK.  After all, regular computer paper is a lot cheaper than photo transfer sheets.  You also want to make sure that any photo that has writing in it is copied,so that the writing reads correctly when it is transferred  to your white material and not backwards.  If it does come out backwards on your test print, just flip the image, or what ever button on your printer does this function.

There are several types of transfer sheets available.   One kind is where you iron your transfer onto a piece of white material.  The other type makes like a sticker, that you stick on your white block, then set it with an iron.  Either one will work, and they are both machine washable.  You might want to pick up a pack of each so you can try for yourself, then decide.

For some reason, sometimes the photo will print darker than the photograph.  I don’t know the reason for this.  Maybe it is that the transfer paper has a different texture than regular computer paper so it absorbes the ink differently.  I just don’t know.

Next comes sizing the photos.   This is really personal preference.  For Peggy’s memory quilt I left the pictures pretty much the size they were.  I may have zoomed in on a few, but for the majority I left them alone.  Now I do admit, I used adobe photo shop on them and “tweaked” them a little.   Adjusting the color, sharpness, etc. to make them as clear and good as I possibly could.  The majority of the photos were the standard 4″x6″.  But when you are sizing your photos, make them a size that looks good and fits the look of the quilt.

With Mom’s pictures I cropped them down to where they were all the same size.  I believe I made them 5″x5″.  With her quilt having so many different materials I thought the consistency of the photo size would helped to balance it out, and it did.  I used a hewlett/packard 1600 printer-scanner all in one and it was very simple to use.  Any scanner will work, but as far as the printer goes , I would try to stick with a laser printer, or a made for that purpose…printing photos.photo printer