Love Me A Lil Souvenir

I am a souvenir-loving girlie.  And I don’t mean souvenirs like the serial killers on Criminal Minds take, I am talking of the souvenir shop classics from travels and other fond memories.  Reminders of fun times are the primary source of décor for my home which is full of art and trinkets.  I have started to fear that I am going to be running out of wall and shelf space as my home isn’t getting any larger anytime here soon.  This has required some creativity on my part, a combination of two hobbies of mine: souvenir collecting and quilting.

I started gathering fabric when I spent a semester in abroad in London.  I stopped at a handful of fabric shops intending to make a quilt out of the fabrics I picked.  The thing is that I didn’t buy a lot and in the end the fabrics didn’t really match well (tough I thought I was doing great in the moment).  This turned into baby quilts that used one of the different fabrics each as a “feature” fabric, and a hand-embroidered label telling where the fabric for that quilt was purchased from. 

I have continued with my eye for fabric during my travels.  In 2017 I visited a handful of European cities with my mom and youngest sister.  While in Holland, I found some great fabric at an outdoor market.  I purchased it not knowing what the quilt front for it was going to look like, but knowing that I have a great backing fabric.  It took me a while to figure out what pattern I wanted to use for the front, but I did eventually figure it out.  I took the Spring Tulip block from Heather Valentine of The Sewing Loft ad adapted it to make a quilt top fit for a reminder of a wonderful trip.  The “windmill” quilting was the last, perfect finishing touch to take me back to Holland.

When I went to South Africa on 2023 I was determined to find a fabric to make another souvenir with.  This trip it came in the form of a tablecloth from a market.  Once again, I didn’t have the quit top figured out so I had to search out the right design.  Elizabeth Hartman’s Spectacular Savanna is almost as if it were designed just for my quilt that serves as a reminder of a once-in-a-lifetime safari in Kreuger National Park.

 I have some more souvenir quilts in the works to remind me of time at Poipu Beach in Hawaii and a weekend in Carlsbad with my childhood best friend.  The ultimate souvenir quilt I have pulled off though is from my year as an Annual Passholder at Disney World.  Working to come up with a completely one-of-a-kind souvenir (that accompanies the dozens of pins I also purchased), I worked to get as many character autographs as possible on 5” x 5” pieces of fabric, which I then hand embroidered over.  After a year of collecting autographs, I put them together in a quilt that features a Mickey Mouse inspired layout.  It is the quilt that I worked my hardest on and put the most amount of time into and it created a truly unique symbol of a very fun year full of Mickey Ice Cream Bars, rides on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and festivals at EPCOT.