A Wedding in Italy

A flash of inspiration birthed this quilt.  It celebrates the wedding of two of my daughter's super super good friends.  

They married last fall with a destination wedding in Italy, a gorgeous setting.  This quilt is my rendition of a photo taken on The Day.  

Quilt for an 1895 Wedding

I love a dated quilt.  I love a dated quilt with a family story (see full story below).  Combined together....well.... it's simply grand.

The fabrics have some preservation issues and staining throughout.  And at some point, a critter chewed a hole in the quilt and almost chewed a second.  The good part of that story is that the critter was polite enough to avoid chewing up any of the embroidered history.

#1

#2

Amish-made Sampler Quilt

 

This quilt was a wedding gift, much adored, and came to me in need of some patching.  The needlework is marvelous, which after all is something Amish quilters are famous for.  This is a quilt made for sale, not at all in the traditional style of the antique Amish quilts.  Repairing it required that my needle skills stay on par with those of this great quiltmaker!

Rose Wreath Quilt

This sweet Rose Wreath quilt is 33 years old.  Some of the appliqués had come loose, a couple of leaves were very ragged, there was a slit in the white background at one edge, and the binding was totally shot, hanging in long dangles.

It is a lovely heirloom for the owner.  The blocks were made and signed by her mother, mother-in-law, other women in the family, and close friends.  Several of these people have passed away, so the quilt is now also a memorial to them.  

One thing that made this a particularly fun project for me is that it was made in my general neighborhood.  The owner is the daughter-in-law of a quilter, and several of the blocks are signed by people I knew.  Also, being made in 1980, it dates to the era when I learned to quilt.  This is the kind of quilt that got me hooked on quilting!

Road to the Wedding Quilt

I posted a couple of weeks ago about this quilt that I made for a friend's son's wedding.  Here is the story of the design process.

The Cats Go To A Wedding

I've gotten such nice response to the post about the wedding quilt I just finished, that I thought I'd write up the wedding quilt I made last June.

A long time ago, I'd discovered this really cute cat block while surfing.  http://w1.avis.ne.jp/~miyako/cat.JPG
(To see more of Miyako's work, go to her home page.)

When Emmie and Gordon, who are great cat-lovers, announced their engagement, I just knew I'd found the perfect use for this block.  The cats are even wearing bow ties, so are dressed and pressed and ready to attend a formal event!

I drafted my own templates according to the look of the photo.  I think my kitties turned out to be a bit more pudgy than in the original quilt.

A Wedding Quilt

At 11:00 yesterday morning, I attended a wedding.  At 4:15 in the afternoon, I put the final stitches in a quilt, wrapped it up, and left at 5:30 for the reception.  I'd started planning the quilt last November, but still, it came down to the wire.  Ah, well.

When I make quilts for wedding gifts, I often base the design on things I know about the couple - things they like to do, their careers, their names.  For example, once I made a quilt with a garden trellis-like arrangement of harmonicas, because the groom is a musician and teacher, with roses climbing up the trellis, because the bride's name is Rose.

For this wedding, I chose several traditional quilt blocks: