A scrappy wedding quilt

In January 2012 I gave my friend Yvonne a quilt kit,

cut from my scraps and those of my mother,

for her 50th birthday.

All the bricks measure 2.5 by 4.5 inches.

Fast forward to last weekend, 

where the quilt top is in a frame, ready for hand stitches

at her daughter's wedding.

Here Mr. Scraps is putting in a few stitches

and he's not even left-handed!

 Yvonne set up the frame at the venue and encouraged everyone to put in a few stitches.

She had an eloquent speech at the dinner about how this quilt features fabrics from many people

and like a marriage, is beautiful in its variety and contrasts.

Yvonne (left) and me at the quilt.

Sorry for the blurry pix.

And we can't have a wedding quilt without a bride, right?

Here's DS1 and DS2 with the bride.

An interesting note: The bride started sewing the bricks together

and her mom finished the job,

so they both had fun with my quilt kit!

I'm linking up with WIP Wednesdays at The Needle and Thread Network.

A thrifty wedding quilt

My friend Yvonne is determined to make a quilt for the weddings of her nieces and nephews. She's a quiltmaker on a budget, and her favourite fabric store is her local thrift shop. Recently I suggested she try men's shirts as a source of fabric, especially since on bag day she can get a a bunch of shirts for $5.

She decided to use the whole shirt, including the labels and seams and tabs

and the pockets and buttons, as in the yellow patch in the middle

to make a beautiful Amish-inspired quilt.

This is Yvonne with her sunshine and shadows quilt, made entirely from thrift shop shirts. She took it to her family's Christmas retreat, and all the nieces and nephews, mostly in their 20s, and some in their teens, sat around the frame and handquilted it. Yvonne is a firm believer in quilting as a community affair, and invited all her friends to help with the last wedding quilt, blogged about here.

(See that bookcase behind Yvonne? that's my secretary desk, now in the corner of the living room, and where I write and blog, fyi.)

playing with 9 patches

I'm testing variations on a 9-patch for an afternoon quilty consultation with Yvonne, who is collecting ideas for another wedding quilt. She has another nephew getting married and last year started a precedent by making a queen-sized handquilted quilt for him. The only plan she has is incorporating some of the last quilt's fabric in this one. We're going to chat over cool drinks and quilt books later today -- what a fun way to spend a holiday!
Has anyone seen my rotary cutter? It's hiding somewhere in my sewing room.

Three babies and a wedding

This child's quilt is the last of my funglies started last summer as a challenge from Tonya and Bonnie to use up our fun and ugly fabrics in a liberated way. I chose the framed nine-patch as my pattern, and made three tops: one 60 by 80 which has been donated to Mennonite Central Committee as a relief quilt, a little pink and blue one (see post below) given to a new baby, and this one from juvenile novelties which I backed with flannelette and tied.



Here are two baby quilts for the children's hospital, meant for boys. The single Irish chain at left is made entirely from scraps, and it is machine quilted in diagnoal lines to a flannelette backing, and bound in navy. The one at the right is the Chimneys and Cornerstones blocks in blues and greens and tone on tone whites from my stash. It has a fun Michael Miller print called Clown Check in the sashings, binding and backing, and was (inexpertly) machine quilted by me. I'm much more comfortable with hand quilting, and I've whined here before how the feed dogs don't drop on my old Elna SP, so this one is done in straight lines (with just a few puckers here or there.) I figure I won't get better unless I practise, and these small quilts are great for that.

And here's that wedding quilt, all handquilted

Yvonne was touched by all your kind comments from my post a few weeks back and she deserves all the credit for putting this quilt together. We hung it from the balcony in her house on the weekend to get a good look at it. For the record, this pattern is called "Melon Patch", found in a book about antique quilts. She has three weeks to get the binding on, not a small task considering the weather has finally turned warm here and it's not the best time to sit around hand sewing binding on with a queen-sized quilt on your lap.

Another scrappy wedding quilt

Another beautiful wedding quilt, still in progress. This one is made by my friend Terry for her niece Candice. It's called "Every Which Way" from Quiltmaker, July/August 2003, p.48-52. Terry was determined to use up scraps, but says this huge king sized top barely made a dent in her scrap basket. Isn't this top great? She's putting a white border around the whole thing, and then sending it out to be custom quilted.

Laying a quilted foundation for a marriage

My friend Yvonne (at left) invited her friends to help her hand quilt this queen-sized snowball nine-patch in time for her nephew's wedding next month. (As of Aug. 1, the quilt was completely handquilted, well ahead of the Aug. 29 deadline. I doubted it myself, but Yvonne was sure it would be ready and it is! ) Y. is a true scrap quilter, preferring to re-purpose clothing from the thrift shop rather than buy new yardage. For this quilt, she solicited bits of greens and purples and neutrals from various quilty friends and relations, including me. I even helped her make the test block of this pattern, modeled after an antique quilt found in a book. That test block, unmatched corners and all, made it into the quilt, evident in the bottom left of the photo below. She's had various reactions on this quilt, mostly from folks who aren't used to scrap quilting, but I think its perfect. It incorporates materials from a wide variety of people and is being quilted by a community of quilters who know her nephew (I think I babysat for him as an infant, and his parents live up the street from me). I like the strong geometrics, the use of values, and the bits that don't quite go but really do, because when you think about it, a good marriage has some unmatched sections in it as well. And of course, the pattern is based on the contrast of values -- you can't appreciate the light without the dark, and the dark is illuminated by the light. A week ago, the hand quilting was about one-quarter done, but Y's aunt was working on it steadily, along with a friend. Both women are in their 80s at least, and were confident they could complete it well before the wedding, since the quilt is in a frame in a basement craft room of their seniors' complex.

A quilted wedding

Indulge me for a bit. This is what happens when a quilter is asked to decorate for a wedding.

Yesterday was my cousin's C's wedding to M. Here they are after the ceremony wrapped up in the quilt we made them. They hadn't seen it before, and they loved it. Here's a scene from the set-up for the ceremony. the candle and signing table, decorated with antique linens and a square made from quilt scraps.
The quilt and the lecturn. I made this table or dresser runner out of leftover batik strips and attached it to the lecturn. a closer view.
The whole stage. You can just barely see the grand piano behind the quilt, which is great, since it wasn't being used, so we thought we'd get the focus away from it.