Colton's Christening Wallhanging

Christening wallhanging

     Here is a photo of the wallhanging I made for Colton's Christening.  This was truly a labor of love.  Last week I had photos of the embroidery designs I had bought from Embroidery Library.  I then printed out all the designs I was going to use and laid them out on the background fabric.

Background fabric with printouts in place

     I then used 1/4" strips of blue painters' tape to mark where I wanted the designs to be embroidered.  I placed a pin at the intersection that was to be the middle of the design.

Background fabric with painters' tape and pins ready for the machine

     The lines of the tape made it easy to get everything straight in the hoop.  I hooped sticky paper and used that for my embroidery.  I had also ironed a sheer fusible interfacing to the back of the white fabric as it was vey lightweight and semi-sheer before I started this process.

Embroidering his name

     Then it was time to do the actual embroidery.  This took almost three hours.  I started with the center line of text.  I peeled off the horizontal tape after getting it lined up in the hoop, but just peeled back the vertical tape to keep that line intact until all the elements were embroidered.

All embroidered and ready to be pressed

     Then it was time to press it from the back.  I did use some Best Press to get it nice and flat.  Then I trimmed it to the correct size and added the borders.  Pinned it to the backing and batting and just did stitch in the ditch quilting around the borders.  I also outline quilted around the shell and the scrolls in 'God Bless You'.  Since it is a wallhanging I am not too concerned about quilting it more closely.

     I then sewed the binding to the back of the quilt and then topstitched it in place from the front of the quilt.

Fabrics for the wallhanging

     I couldn't find a baby boy print that wasn't really 'cutesy' so I chose a pretty blue print and then picked up the tan shades for the other fabrics.  The background is a white on white crosses print.

Colton with his parents and godparents

     I had this wallhanging on the wall between the kitchen and dining room but we moved it to the living room for photos.  It was too small to fit the hangers holding up the quilt in there so we just pinned his wallhanging on the front of it.  The colors didn't clash so it worked out fine as a backdrop for all the photos taken that day.