I learned a lot about printing fabric. I had first tried to print at home on a ink jet printer, it works okay, but the quality of the fabric is poor and it can get pricey to buy the sheets that are washable.
It cost me $16.50 a yard for premium cotton at My fabric Designs (MFD) and the price is up to $18.00 a yard. I scanned some family pictures and did a test run which costs me about $22.00 ($16.50. plus sales tax ands shipping), but it helped me see what I would get.
My Print Design has some rules. Max size of file must be less than 150 MB and image pixel per inch can not exceed 150 px per inch. The 150 MB file size and 150 px/in means you cannot get all printed on one yard of fabric. Plus you have to allow for a edge around the fabric. You will get repeat print with partial blocks on the right side and bottom. After printing, I see I could have squeezed in another block in my rows. That said, it was going to take 3 yards. Here is an image showing my blocks as I sent them to MFD.
Each block has a number in the corner. In the third panel is a guide that shows the numbers of the blocks and who is in each photo in the block I am going to hand-sew that guids to back of the quilt once the quilt is finished.
I made a template with a black border and pasted the photos inside the border in each block. The template is 7.55 inches. Some of the color photos from the 40's and 50's had faded and color was terrible, so i decided to keep all the photos in sepia or greyscale. There is one photo of my mother on her 80the birthday with her 6 children. The picture was from 1995 and it had good color, but I converted it to greyscale to keep with my color scheme. I made a file of all the family images that I scanned in. When I started working, I selected the pictures at random, depending the size of image, resized as needed. Some much beloved images are repeated.
I used civil war prints for the borders. The border strips are 7/8 sewn or 1 1/4 cut. I bought the civil war fabric FQ on Etsy and Ebay I sewed them log cabin style. I put three rows of fabric around edge, light grey, tan and dark gray. Hobby Lobby had some nice grey fabric and price was right, used these for borders as the civil war fabrics can get pricey.. I found some wide backing on Ebay, white with tiny black calico. Made offer and bought enough for all 3 quilts at a good price.
put together : rows 7 blocks across/9 blocks down/ 63 blocks in all. If you would like to use my template, I can post it here.
I you google "family quilts" or grave yard quilts, you can see other people have made family quilts. Also on Pinterest.
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