Sew Festive Handmade: A finish for Friday

Friday, March 2, 2012

A finish for Friday - The Wedding Edition

LOVE me a striped binding :)

Hi all!

I'm finally showing off the quilt I made for my good friend Ashley who's getting married on Sunday. As you will recall, I got sick at the most inconvenient time for a last-minute quilt for her bridal shower at the beginning of February and couldn't quilt this baby. I got it finished up a bit later, although I just washed it last night and took pictures today.

I'm sure the wedding will be a beautiful celebration, and I fully expect to cry [I'm a sap for weddings].

It's 11 blocks by 15 blocks, finishing at 55x75". I wanted to make sure the colors and prints were "man friendly" as well.

The entire thing is stippled except for 7 stars, which have no stippling inside them and are instead echo quilted. I wouldn't have been able to do that if I had given the quilt to her on time. And while I love the effect, especially on the back, it was a beast to get this quilt through my machine with a whopping 5.5 inches of throat space; pivoting for all those star points made me rethink my decision many times.

The back features the cute little pinwheels from the Children at Play collection in the middle, with lots of solids to show off the quilting. And actually, the dark green was not intended for the backing. I was originally going to use the other 3 colors plus the gray, but I miscalculated how much of each color I'd need, and so had to add in additional yardage, so I ended up with the gray strip. I'm not entirely sure if I like it...

Mmm it looks so nice on the back! And although you certainly can't tell from this photo, or really even looking at the quilt, I had the worst time quilting this. My machine really hated some of the bulkier seams, and I lost my FMQ groove for some of the time. This was my first time quilting a large object on my new table [I've quilted all my quilts on my coffee table; bad for my back, but good for control over the quilt]. My machine moves on the slippery surface while I'm wrestling with the quilt. Not ideal.