A Quilt to Chart Max’s Growth

Dear Max,

If I may say so , you are one lucky guy! As the youngest of my niece/nephews, you reap the benefits of your Auntie Candy having learned so much and improved her creative skills! When you were born, she made you and awesome piece of art to adorn your nursery walls, a cute mobile for Christmas last year, and a really cute outfit this Christmas.

Now, I never said I was FAST! Your Mom asked me to make you a growth chart last July, and it’s taken until now to get it done! Your Mom wrote a cute blog post about how you’re almost 2 years old! How can that be? How does time go so fast? Anyway, it’s finally done!

To wrap my head around how to make something like this for you, I had to think about something that was long and skinny and had a long vertical line. That part was easy – because your Uncle Andrew and cousins Liam and Logan are fisherman, I got the idea of having a fishing line descending to the depths of a lake pretty quickly. What took me a long time to figure out was how to mark your growth without (gasp!) writing all over the quilt. This was something that had me stumped. I thought about velcro and fish, but the velcro would have made such a big fat fishing line, I couldn’t make that! Finally, it came to me – I could sew a safety pin on the back of the fish, and your Mom could pin it on – that way you wouldn’t be carrying the fish off and loosing it! 😉

I dyed a piece of fabric a pretty blue green with lots of texture and movement, so the lake water had lots of interest. The boat is wood (of course) and has your name on it (of course). I stitched the fishing line with really thick thread and stitched up and down with my walking foot, so it would be nice and straight. If you peek at the bottom you should see that the fish hook is stitched with silver thread (something that is HARD to sew with!) I made some light marks up the fishing line with my pigment pen 1″ apart, marking each foot with a number. Your Dad should hang this so that the line just above the hook that says “2” is 2 feet from the ground – make sure to help him with this!

The fish are made by fusing fabric to peltex, one layer for the front, the other for the back. I free hand quilt a number for your age on the front, and stitch a safety pin on the back. Ten I fuse them together and zigzag all around to cover the white edges – I hope you like the multicolor thread that goes around the fish – I think it looks cool, plus I couldn’t bear switching the thread, top & bottom, so many times! 😉

Your Mom can put the #1 fish on where you measured at 1 year, and place the 2nd fish where you’ll measure in just over a week. Please notice that there’s also a fish with a see through pocket – whenever she feels like it, she can write a new date, slip it in the pocket and move the fish to how tall you are on that day! (this is the final thing I needed to figure out!)

Your cousin Logan tried it out and says it works great!

Here are some detail shots for some friends of your Auntie Candy who like to see how she works:

I sure hope you, your Mom & your Dad like this!

Love, Auntie Candy

p.s. I’ve updated this post so I can include it in now one, but 2 differnt sew & tells. definitely click the buttons below to be tacen to a list of fantastic things made by people all over the web.

Thanks Kim

Thanks Amy

33 Responses

  1. This is too Cool! If I weren’t done having nieces and nephews, I would steal this idea! I especially love that you added the fish for the current height. So much more portable than marks on the door frame…..

  4. Holy Crap, Auntie Candy!! This is beyond freakin’ awesome!!!!! You are so amazing … thank you so much for this beautiful artwork! It’s gonna look awesome in Max’s room. What a lucky guy! Love ya!

  6. oh. my. word. THIS IS AMAZING!! I totally need something like this, since we move all the time, we don’t have a wall designated to growth marks…. I Love it!

  8. Totally adorable… is our Logan and the quilt is cute as well… Aunties are busy people but they get there in the end… Yeah for Aunties!

  11. WOW……Ryan wants to know if he ever got one!!!! Too cool Candy!!! Max is one lucky kid!! Love it 🙂

  15. Wow, so wonderfully cute! I just stumbled upon your blog from Posie gets Cozy, and I just love your style, artistry, and your free-motion stitching videos…basically, I am having a wonderful time just browsing around. I am a sewer and a knitter, but I am new to embroidery and quilting. I have two young ones so this kind of a project may just be the next one for me! Oh, and I adore the colors. Can’t wait to keep reading.

  18. That is the cutest growth chart ever! It would’ve been perfect for one of my son’s that loves to fish. Now he’s bigger. 🙁

    Thanks for linking to the party with this great post!

    ~Kim

  22. This is brilliant. All the details and techniques for measuring the growth are well thought out. This is just too adorable. Thanks for sharing.

  23. This is SO cute! The best thing is that they can always take it with them even if they move to another house. We always marked heights on a door frame, but then we moved.

  33. As you know, I LOVE Valdani thread. I’ve altcauly been trying their 12wt hand dyes through my sewing machine and it’s working. Recently, I have been delving into the rayons and they are beautiful. The only reason I didn’t use them in my art is I didn’t want the sheen.