Memory quilts are a wonderful way of preserving important events and ideas in a person's or group's life. They can be more meaningful than a scrapbook because not only do you have the mementos incorporated into the quilt, but you also can have memories surrounding the quilt itself. My mother made me a quilt when I was young, and it is very special to me now because of the fact that it reminds me of when I used to snuggle into it on cool nights at our summer cottage on Pender Island. It reminds me of all the fun we had at our island cottage every summer. It reminds me of when I was a kid.

There are several ways to create a memory quilt. You can cut up T-shirts and incorporate their designs into your quilt. My daughter, for example, has several T-shirts she received from different school events that are much too big for her but remind her of the fun she had on those field trips, competitions etc. This kind of thing would be great to incorporate into a quilt. You can also use your imagination to include ribbons won in a competition, a child's drawings, sequins or beads, photos of the person or of something important to the person, or even a handmade flower. You can incorporate appliqué or hand embroidery. The possibilities are endless.

Transferring photos to fabric makes the quilts especially meaningful. You would need a scanner or digital camera to upload your photos to your computer as well as a printer that is optimized for printing photos. You can buy inkjet printer fabric sheets if you are making a small or perhaps a one-time project, or there are ways you can make your own which is more cost-effective but will require more time and energy. It would be a good idea to use a program like "Paint Shop Pro" to make the colors more vivid so they will show up better when you print them. It would also be a good idea to test your edited and resized photos on regular paper to make sure they will be printed just the way you want them to look. Then you can just put your inkjet printer fabric sheets into your printer. The photos you get on the fabric are soft, clear, and easy to stitch.

There is another method that many quilters like to use. The technique of color copy heat transfer produces photos on fabric that are colorfast and washable. You can get the special paper required for this at some print shops, quilt shops, or by mail order. Make sure you follow the directions on the paper. Place your transfer paper in a full-color laser copy machine. You need to make sure that you have the photos printed backwards so that when they are transferred to fabric they will come out the right way round. You may want to crop your photos or overlap pictures to hide unnecessary details in order to get more images onto one piece of paper. You can also enlarge or reduce the image with your copy machine so that the result is just the right size for your quilt project.

You should iron a test patch first to make sure your results will be good. After you have pressed the fabric, you need to be careful when you pull the paper off so that your image doesn't get distorted.

If your iron is not hot enough to transfer the image to your fabric successfully, a local T-shirt shop may let you use their heat press for a small fee. Another option is using those mail order companies that will transfer your photos to their cotton fabric.

A memory quilt is really a work of art. It is an extremely meaningful gift, whether it is a gift to a child to remember his sports successes or acting in the school play, to a parent who has lost their child, to a couple to celebrate a wedding anniversary, or even to a charitable organization to remember the people they have served. A good idea when making a quilt to celebrate someone living, is to leave patches where significant people can sign their names or make special comments. That makes it even more special.