My grandmother saved a bunch of my grandpa's ties after he died. She wanted to make a quilt from them, but since her Parkinson's only got worse after his death, they have been hanging in her closet.

I decided to use a dresden template to create a quilt square using my grandpa's ties. It uses 6 ties (two sets are from one tie) and printable fabric with our family tartan on it (my dad scanned his tie and emailed it to me!). The middle has my grandfather's name, date of birth and date of death. It wasn't until I typed that part that I realized it had been 10 years, this Christmas.

I think it turned out pretty good considering I had no idea what I was doing, I've never quilted or done patchwork, we had two faulty irons, an ironing board with no pad and I can't draw, cut or sew a straight line to save my life!

I even added a tag on the side - the front says "Made by Melinda 2011" and the back says "Dry Clean Only; Do Not Get Wet." This is important since pieces of the pillow are printed on fabric, and getting it wet will make all the ink run!