60th anniversary wedding quilt
I have to say, I’m ridiculously proud of myself. I finished a quilt in a week and a half, start-to-finish. I don’t ever want to undertake that kind of marathon again, but still - I did it! It was a special occasion - a girlfriend asked me to make a quilt for her grandparents’ 60th wedding anniversary at the end of October. I said sure! Then, come to find out they moved the date of the celebration to October 20th, effectively reducing the time I had to work on it by a week. She said it wouldn’t be a big deal if it wasn’t ready in time, but damnit - what fin is it if you’re at a party and your gift isn’t ready? So I kicked it into overdrive and forged ahead. I can see a lot of mistakes that I made, and some of the corners I would have ripped out and re-sewn if I had the time, but in the end it came out “good enough” and everyone was thrilled with it. That’s all I can ask for, right? My girlfriend is being sweet and giving me two bottles of wine as extra payment.
The pattern is a wedding rings variant called “Diamond Rings”; I found it through Heartland Treasures KS. Originally, the quilt was supposed to be silver, blue, and cream - the theme being that the 60th wedding anniversary is the “Diamond anniversary”. I wanted to evoke the shiny glittery glam of diamonds, but when I headed out to my local quilt shop to pick up fabric I fell in love with the blues and whites. It reminded me of the china you’d get on your wedding day. And the gold accents for the actual entwined wedding rings was a nice touch. The top is quilted with invisible thread, while the backside is done in cream. I didn’t want the quilting to overpower the pattern, or the fabric patterns, so I stitched in the ditch around the oval segments.
The embroidery is my own calligraphy. I’ve been practicing calligraphy lately and it was the perfect excuse to transfer my skills from pen to fabric. The style is a mix between Italic and Spencerian, borrowing elements from both but not being true to either. I sort of just… whimsyed my way through it as I went. I used a water-disappearing marker (like this one) to trace out the calligraphy before I embroidered it; the embroidery itself is just a simple backstitch.
Sewn, quilted, and bound. All that’s left is some embroidery.
True to color; yes, Locke, you can help mommy take pictures. Who’s a good boy?
Embroidery
Embroidery close-up
Backing & quilting
The next few weeks are going to be busy; I have a full-sized baby quilt to make for a girlfriend, a crib-sized baby quilt to make for a different girlfriend, and I have to finish up some Christmas projects. One of the baby quilts can wait until after the Holiday, but the other is a Christmas present. I have my own quilting projects that are still waiting in the wings, as well as the embroidered flower quilt I’m working on. I also started knitting a throw for the living room… I might need a vacation sometime soon!
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