Thursday, February 3, 2011

Preserving A Child's Artwork



Finding it difficult to throw away the hundreds of my children's and grandchildren's art paper's I've collected over the years I came up with a way to enjoy their drawings throughout my day.
First I took a photo of the art I wanted to preserve.   Then using my computer reduced them to the size I wanted and printed them in black and white on regular copy paper.


Then I transfered the drawing onto prewashed and dried, white cotton muslin simply by placing the fabric on top of the drawing and tracing it lightly with a pencil.   Holding the fabric and paper up to a window so the light shines through may be necessary if you can't see the print through the fabric.


Then I used embroidery stitches to fill in the artwork.   If you haven't done embroidery and would like to try this wonderful craft click here for a link with easy to follow embroidery instructions by video.


I used strips of colored cotton material to boarder each piece of white artwork and then sewed them all together to make a quilt top.   After machine quilting and binding - they were finished.  
Here are some photo's of the finished quilts. 








I love the children's artwork and the quilt will become even more valuable as they grow older.