Tutorial for working with different sizes of photos

I have been commissioned (by my Cousin) to make a quilt using photos from her business (Merchant’s Trucking Company). It will be raffled or auctioned at their annual meeting in March.

While making this quilt, I decided to photograph the process and present a tutorial about making a quilt using photographs that are different sizes, so here goes…..

First of all, decide on the size of block to be used…..in this case, I chose 6 inch finished.

Print the photos, being sure to keep them under the 6 inch size. Make some of them quite a bit smaller than 6 inches, and some almost full size. These sizes will also be determined by the quality of the photos that you are using.

Cut the photos out, leaving a 1/4 inch seam allowance on each side.

Cut strips of the fabric that you want to use to border the photos. I like to cut the strips larger than I need them to be…..in this case I cut them 2-1/2 inches.

Place one strip in your machine and sew the photos, one at a time, onto the strip.

Lay the pieced strip onto your cutting board and slice the fabric between the photos. Press the strip away from the photo.

Follow the same process for the opposite side of the photo.

Now, take the border strips and sub-cut them into pieces that are the finished size of the block plus about 1-1/2 to 2 inches. In this case I cut these border pieces 8 inches.

Sew one of these strips to the un-bordered sides of the photos, roughly centering the photo in the middle of the trip. Don’t worry about the un-even borders from the first sewing, just concentrate on the new strip being straight with the photo and sew on the edge of the new strip.

Press these strips away from the photo as well.

Square up the blocks, using a square-up ruler. You can choose to center the photo in the block, or have it off-center.

Ta-Da…. now your blocks are ready to put into a quilt.