Quilted Picture Frame

I’m REALLY new to quilting and this quilted picture frame is pretty simple even for a novice. I got word that my son was going to propose to his gal and I wanted to make something special for them. They are both into photography and old 35mm cameras so I figured a film strip would be perfect. One problem - trying to find a pattern was near impossible. There were plenty of pictures out there but no mention of how to actually create the masterpiece so I figured I’d put together a simple tutorial.

My initial thought was to make a ‘grow with us’ kind of lap quilt where I could to another filmstrip with each new milestone of their life. Great thought but I had no idea how or if I could even make it happen so I moved on.

This project was an evolving project as, like I mentioned before, I’m new to this so getting things to the right size was going to be interesting. I’m also not a ‘pattern person’. Recipes and patterns tend to be more of a guideline not a ‘set in stone’ kind of thing so I just roll with it.

So let’s get on with it shall we?

I started out by folding the black fabric so I’d cut the whole width in one shot. Basically I was cutting through 4 layers of fabric which created a 1 1/2” strip the width of the fabric.

I cut about 4 strips to start with but in the end needed about 6. Again, I’m typing this from memory so some numbers won’t be specific.

I then did the same with the white fabric but I only cut 2 strips because I wasn’t going to need as much.

Previous to beginning I had created a quick mock-up pattern in an Excel document so I’d kind of know how many squares I would need

As you can see from below, I had various ideas on how I wanted to proceed before deciding on the final results.

The quilts below would measure out to a standard lap quilt of 50” x 62” give or take.

Below is the final rendition of what I came up with. The quilted frame came out pretty close so I’m good with that.

I didn’t think to take a lot of pictures as I went along so I’ll just explain the process

I took the long strips of 1 1/2” black and cut 2 1/2” pieces. This would leave me a 1/4” on each side for the seem.

The white strips I cut into 1 1/2” square pieces again, allowing for the 1/4” seam for each side

I then attached the black and white pieces to create a strip

I cut the black strips for the pictures and pinned everything to get an idea on how long to cut the strips.

Once I figured out how long the middle black strip needed to be I trimmed them down and sewed them to the picture pieces

Now it was time to sew the picture strips to the black and white strips

I finished the piece with black and white striped material on the back and used some of the black material to make the binding.