When I was planning Molly's Wedding Quilt, I thought that I'd put some appliques in the large white squares. Each applique would be something special about the blended family, Molly, her husband, and his two children.
But in the end, the appliques that I'd done seemed to interfere with the appearance of the quilt design. However, I'd already made several applique squares. What to do?
Well, make another quilt, of course! A special family quilt.
The background fabric for the top was one that looked like wood paneling. I just put the layers together and quilted by stitching between the "boards" of the paneling. Piece of cake!
Each applique was based on a 5" square (hello, charm packs) that was special to a member of the family or the family as a whole. The squares represented their sports or music or careers, and things that they love to do together. I did fusible applique and satin stitched around the pieces.
I decided to try to make each square look kind of like a photo in an album. If you don't remember what a photo album looked like, it was kind of like this: you slipped the photo into little black corner pieces that held them into the album.
For each square, I create an applique, then added a white border. Then I sewed a black square to each corner and trimmed.
Molly and her husband had one of their first dates at a yoga class. I thought that this batik fabric was a perfect background.
The one non-applique was part of the reading that I did at their wedding. What an honor to be asked to do this. I don't have an embroidery machine, but my Brother has some beautiful fonts that looked just right.
This is the final quilt. You'll see basketball, soccer, chorus, kayaking, ping-pong, guitar, Molly's dog, Poe, cheerleading, and tucked away at the top, the cabin in Michigan that we all share. There's nothing better than family.
The quilt back is a beautiful green fabric that reminds me of our cabin in the woods. I added a sleeve so that they could hang the quilt if they wanted to. The binding is a pretty aqua (looks bright in this photo).
Bonus! All those little pieces that got trimmed from the corners of the "photos" made some nice little -- very little -- 4-patches. They will get used some day...
No comments:
Post a Comment