Paxton's Quilt

This is the second of four memory quilts I made in the last few months. Four quilts for four children who lost their father last year.

Paxton is 6 years old and his quilt has a "Canadiana"/Americana All-Star Theme.

Nancy found this pattern on Pinterest and it really spoke to her because her husband, Kevin, was born in The United States.  The pattern was originally for a Queen size bed so I did some playing around with the measurements so that I could have something to work with and we would end up with a lap size quilt.

the completed quilt top

The blue parts of the quilt consist of Kevin's blue shirts, the beige parts include one of his shirts, a pair of his pants and some fabrics from my stash and from the fabric store to make it look scrappy. Nancy and I had fun picking out the red fabrics at our local quilt shop. We wanted to add a bit of Americana with the stripes and a bit of "Canadiana" with the maple leaves. It was the perfect time to buy all of those fabrics, it being the sesquicentennial, and all of those fabulous fabrics being in the store! We also bought the blue border and binding and a dark blue polka dot for the backing.

Kevin was from Atlanta so I added a strip from a shirt that had the word "Atlanta" on it, and he was a fan of Ralph Lauren Polo shirts so I added the tag from one of his shirts to a strip as well.

The inspiration quilt had one star in the centre of it and Nancy liked this idea. Since Paxton is only 6 years old, we wanted to make the quilt playful, so we went with it, and added stars here and there in different colours, some are fabrics from Kevin's shirts and some aren't. I even found that fun navy star fabric in my stash.

To keep with the theme I quilted a Stars and Loops pattern on the quilt.

the quilt, loaded on the longarm

The stars and loops really show up nicely on the back of the quilt with the lighter coloured thread.

the back 

 Here is Paxton's label, with the scriptures, picked especially for him by his mom.

His dad used to sign every email and letter: "Here, with a purpose."

Everything was very well thought out and has special meaning.

the label

The children received their quilts on the 1 year anniversary of their father's passing, along with a beautiful photo book their mother put together.  Beautiful keepsakes they will cherish forever.

2 more quilts to go...