lewfuller's photostream  

My interest in creating photo memory quilts has evolved over the past 10 years but my interest in fabric based art began much earlier. Starting in High school as the yearbook photo editor and through college where I worked to developed my skills using the camera.

In the mid-1990's my interest in family history, still an on-going project, reached a new level when my grandmother celebrated her 90th birthday. At that time I created a family history website which got me started collecting family photos and then digitally converting the photos and building a family digital photo database.

It was in 2003 that I started to search for a way of presenting the digital images the had been converted so I eventually started creating photo books. But like so many things in life, the unexpected happened, a co-worker who happened to be a quilter brought some quilting books to work where I had a chance to look through them. While looking, through the books, I began to visualize patterns of photos creating a quilt. Even through photo quilts weren't common at that time, the means to add digital images to fabric then sew to make the quilts were there and after doing some research, some 3 years later I completed my first photo quilt (in which I later won 1st Place and Best of Division in a quilt competition). It was from the photos in that this quilt that I created my first photo book.

It was after making the first quilt that I kept thinking about could be done in the future that could make my quilts unique and that eventually lead to what I now call the mosaic photo quilt. I believe that I have created a heirloom quality quilt, each one unique and individual just as our families are.

I believe that I've developed a means of displaying family photos, old or new, as art. The way of doing so isn't exactly new but my way of using your photos is. I use quilts or wall hangings as the platform and family photos placed on the quilts as a mosaic. Photo quilts aren't new, they've been made for around 20 years but turning your photos into a work of art is.