PHOTOGRAPHIC PATCHWORK- DIY nursery art & keepsake

My baby is 6 months old and I am already becoming sentimental about the time “when he was little”! As the weeks have gone by I have had to, in stages, pack away the clothes that no longer fit him. Size 56 is a distant (well, 5-month-old) memory and size 74 is now the order of the day (even if we do manage to squeeze into the odd size 68!).

I have wanted to create something to decorate the walls of my baby’s nursery and looking at his baby clothes whilst feeling nostalgic gave me the idea of making a digital patchwork; a collage of close-up images of his baby clothes (easily created using Adobe InDesign and printed on photo paper). From my baby’s first tiny pair of jeans (bought whilst on holiday in France when I was 16 weeks pregnant) to an organic onesie (sent to him from thousands of miles away by my brother in Australia), each sweet, doll-sized garment tells a story and provokes a memory. I hope this simple little piece of homemade art will prove to become a treasured keepsake for my boy, one that will be around long after his tiny clothes have been worn out, handed down or given away… and one that will remind him how much friends and family lovingly welcomed his arrival.


Want to create your own photographic patchwork at home and don’t have access to Adobe InDesign? You can cut and paste the old-fashioned way, starting by easily drawing up a grid with the number of squares you desire on white card (for my digital version I chose an 8 x 8 square format, and each square was 26mm x 26mm). Take photographs of your child’s clothes (or toys, books or what have you) and, once printed, choose an area of detail that you like and neatly cut a square of the desired size from the photograph. You’ll end up with a collection of square images of interesting details with which you can play around and order/reorder like puzzle pieces until you come up with a design that you like. Stick each square in its place, mount/frame and voilà, a decorative memento for your wall!