That Added Touch To Make The Quilt Yours

With so many talented designers and sources of inspiration I find myself falling in love with a pattern and immediately start cutting.  Every once in a while a quilt will just speak to you.  Such was the case a couple of years ago when browsing through an issue of McCall's Quick Quilts resulting in this quilt.

  Seeing the photo of the quilt of little dresses soon took me back to my childhood.  This quilt spurred that instant cutting mode for me, leaving all the other things I had to do on the back burner.  But while cutting, that little thought crept in saying.......ok, what can I do to make it special to me, being from a publication there will be many like it made by other quilters.
While appliqueing the blocks I was thinking of the trims and buttons I would purchase to decorate the quilt when it occurred to me that would be the area to make the quilt special to me.  I stopped sewing and headed for my grandmother, mother, mother-in-laws and my button boxes and tin of vintage trims.  I knew I had a couple of trims my grandmother had crocheted but the lengths were very short, but just long enough to be sewn to my little dresses.

  Though the trim on this dress is not hand made, the buttons are special to me because I can remember them being on one of my mother's blouses.  Though at a glace the quilt does not look much different than the published pattern, it's reading the label that sets the quilt apart for me and my family.
As I work with my quilting students we create projects from books, magazines and patterns, but I always urge then to do a little something different with the project  to make it theirs.
Enjoy your day and make your journey special.