Caleb's Handprint Quilt

Before Carly was even pregnant with Caleb, I bought a book, 'Handprint Quilts: Creating Children's Keepsakes with Paint and Fabric' by Marcia Layton. I thought it had the cutest ideas of using kid's handprints to create animals and flowers used in a quilt.

When Caleb was about 6 months old I thought I'd give it a try. I cut out several squares of muslin fabric and taped them tightly to cardboard squares (for some stability). To get the handprint, Jorge & I put him in his little plastic bathtub in the kitchen sink and then I slathered paint on his hand. Quickly I tried to make a handprint on the fabric. It didn't work. Alas, Caleb was a little young, wanted to keep his hand in a little fist, and then started crying. And even though he was in the bathtub, somehow he ended up with yellow paint all over him. I was more successful with the footprint and got 2 good prints.

However, I was not about to give up with the handprint. I took him to my computer printer and made a picture of his hand. I then cut that out and then cut the same image out of a sponge. I painted the sponge hand and pressed that onto the muslin---voila! It worked. Using other paint colors, I added some details to the fish.

I sewed them together with some strips of cute sailboat fabric and put the red footprints in the corners. I quilted around the hand fish and the feet. I love the end result!